Conventions for Stability field of Cabal packages

Question

Cabal allows for a freeform Stability field:

stability: freeform

The stability level of the package, e.g. alpha, experimental, provisional, stable.

What are the community conventions about these stability values? What is considered experimental and what is provisional? I see only few packages are declared as stable. What kind of stability does it refer to, stability of the exposed API or the ultimate bug-free state of the software?

Answer 1

The field is mostly defunct now, and shouldn't be used. As Max said, it will probably be replaced by something meaningful in the future.

If you're interested in the history, the field originated in a design proposal for the first set of Hierarchical Haskell Libraries. That document describes the original intended meanings for the values.