alt Hacker NewsSurprised not to see nix mentioned in connection with this topic!
If you use nix (especially nix flakes), this consideration falls out naturally from the nixpkgs repository reference (SHA, branch, etc) you choose to track. Nixpkgs has various branches for various appetites for the "cutting edge".
Can you explain how this works? Is it different from what's described in the "Language vs. system package managers" section of the post?