"We don't need more quality because it works on my machine" or "bugs in the core functions are fine because you don't have to upgrade" are both hard arguments to win...
Specifically, my issues usually begin from attempting to add devices to the z-wave network on a broken release where it usually will fail and/or create more ghost nodes. The Hubitat changelogs specifically show the root cause of these failures end up being issues directly related to adding nodes or database corruptions - to which I do wish to reiterate that I am very thankful are being closed quickly!
My z-wave devices always had some oddities on the C7 starting in Oct/Nov 2020 and I suspected the ghost nodes that occurred early on were the issue that kept causing instability. Issues with the C7 are now heavily documented throughout these forums. I started with about 30 z-wave devices last year and in this year in Oct 2021 I began adding another 40 z-wave devices, but I felt I had to fix the instability of the z-wave mesh first by resetting and starting over.
When I started to re-do my entire z-wave mesh, I was on 2.2.9.133 and because of the blank security confirmation page on this version and the past issues with S2 devices on the C7 I ended up switching to use SmartStart for everything as a workaround for the blank security page.
While on a release version that added nodes correctly (between 2.2.9.133 to start and then somewhere at/above 2.2.9.137), once I re-added all of the original 30 nodes everything was amazingly better - more stable, much faster to respond, etc. - with the newly formed mesh.
On the 2.3.0.115 or 2.3.0.116 release, I attempted to add 3 new devices that completely failed to join correctly and after several hours troubleshooting I finally got them to join somewhere between downgrading to 2.3.0.113 and resetting the devices multiple times. Then afterwards the rest of my z-wave network decided to go haywire and I had to air-gap about 8 different switches and repair the mesh. The issues continued over the past week with devices not responding. At one point my wife reported even several WiFi devices connected to the hub also decided to go crazy. This got to the point where one z-wave switch froze and then appears to have somehow completely dropped off the z-wave mesh. After attempting to rescue it for several hours, I ended up factory resetting it and left a ghost node that I could not clean up until the 2.3.0.119 release that dropped ~8hrs ago.
Additionally, my point is not to debate the topic of whether a stable mesh and automations continue to operate in stasis, but more to point out that the basic/core functions (e.g., adding a S2 z-wave device, etc.) should assuredly work every release and a typical user should not be worried about accepting an update with the thought that they may lose the ability to add nodes (again).
Pointing out that you've survived all of these point releases because you haven't needed to perform the action that became the bug directly fixed in the next point release doesn't mean all of those releases were Production ready / "Stable" if a core function was not working.
I am advocating for, at a minimum, a list of the core function tasks that must be confirmed to be functional on each release before it is promoted, and, as a suggestion, it would be very useful if this is implemented as automated tests in a CI/CD pipeline, because each of these versions I just named in the last 60 days should never have made it past the simple test of: "can you add a new z-wave node?". I'd be happy to track to a slower release cycle for the assurance that the core functions will never be broken on the Stable channel.
Good luck with that.
