But I think the new backend build environment will lend itself to more regular updates. As well as easier community member input into the development process. I'm not sure when that will see the light of day though?

So in the meantime, it's up to end users to do the hard yards themselves... for now anyway. However you're not completely on your own (with Redmine at least). There is a thread with info - specificly this post (and a few other threads about discussing it as well). Obviously it is encouraged for users to share and discuss here on the forums so newcomers can join the dots so to speak. Ideally it would be great if it were easier than that, but that's where we're curently at.

As for Mantis, that 's aslightly different case, as it's installed form Ubuntu upstream repos, se even though the version is relatively old and it may not have all the features of more recent releases, but it has the advantage of security updates being backported upstream (by Ubuntu) and autoinstalled (with the default config of TKL auto installing security updates everyday).

I wrote a bit of a wiki post that (attempts to sum up the way different packages are installed and the pros and cons of each method.