They release snapshots which are already quite stable in my experience. OpenWRT is practically a dead project, so you shouldn't expect security updates anymore. The last openwrt-security-announce mail is from march.

I just recently shot myself in the foot with LEDE.

I decided to use a snapshot as it's the only thing with support for my router.

Got it setup and working nicely, it looks great, works great, no bugs, perfect!

Then a week or so later I needed to install a package, only to find that their package manager only ever has the most recent version of each package, and there is no way to upgrade without wiping and reinstalling. And by this point the kernel had updated, so I couldn't install any kernel modules without bumping the kernel first.

So now i'm stuck on a branch that I can't install packages on, I don't really have the time to pull down all the configs and reformat, and i can't update or install anything at all.

It's kind of my own fault for not reading and fully understanding the docs before starting, but it still sucks.