[gentoo-dev] Gentoo LTS or: proper backward compatibility?

[m1027]

Hi and happy new year.

When we create apps on Gentoo they become easily incompatible for
older Gentoo systems in production where unattended remote world
updates are risky. This is due to new glibc, openssl-3 etc.

So, what we've thought of so far is:

(1) Keeping outdated developer boxes around and compile there. We
would freeze portage against accidental emerge sync by creating a
git branch in /var/db/repos/gentoo. This feels hacky and requires a
increating number of develper VMs. And sometimes we are hit by a
silent incompatibility we were not aware of.

(2) Using Ubuntu LTS for production and Gentoo for development is
hit by subtile libjpeg incompatibilites and such.

(3) Distributing apps as VMs or docker: Even those tools advance and
become incompatible, right? And not suitable when for smaller Arm
devices.

(4) Flatpak: No experience, does it work well?

(5) Inventing a full fledged OTA Gentoo OS updater and distribute
that together with the apps... Nah.

Hm... Comments welcome.

Thanks