what do you have as a device? I wonder if the stable builds are made to be -user builds, can somebody comment? For me doing testing, I’m thankful to have prebuilt -dev images having userdebug to elevate to root when debugging.
The documented position of the e devs is at the docs page https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/builds.html
UserDebug is a heritage we carry from LineageOS from where we have forked our source code. It is also needed on many older devices to boot and work properly.
From a security perspective, it may be safer to have user mode instead of debug mode, though an attacker can also decompile an APK to understand how it works. So the real benefit might not be that huge.
However, we plan to enable user mode for newer devices on stable builds.
it came up in the backlog at https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/backlog/-/issues/1402 (maybe vote?) and prior community forum discussion on user vs userdebug at Why Development Build Instead Of Production Build
Maybe it just needs a concerted effort to check which devices do run well on the -user builds (divestos I think can provide that info) and offer two types of image for all devices - could be lots of effort