someone asked me about this semi-recently.  i want to say it was mnissler@, but maybe it was someone else.

there's no reason we can't update to the latest version.  it's just that no one has looked into it because the current code is working.

My current plan is to cherry-pick a few critical bug fixes as patches from upstream into 1.6.8 in the "very near" term to address issues like  issue 674288 .

The next step would be upgrading to 1.6.30 in near term (e.g. next release). I looked at the deltas between 1.6.8 and 1.6.30, which are reasonable and manageable.

For a long term, we may consider the 1.8 or even 1.9 release but that may require upgrading other packages as well.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/chromiumos-overlay/+/031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86

commit 031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86
Author: Ben Chan <benchan@chromium.org>
Date: Tue Jan 10 20:10:25 2017

sys-apps/dbus: upgrade from 1.6.8 to 1.6.30

This CL performs a 1.6.x series upgrade of sys-apps/dbus from release
1.6.8 to 1.6.30.

Most of the existing Chromium OS specific patches are carried over and
applied cleanly on top of 1.6.30 with manual examination.

The following patches are dropped as they are already included in
1.6.30:

    dbus-1.6.8-_dbus_babysitter_unref-avoid-infinite-loop-if-waitpi.patch
    dbus-1.6.8-_dbus_printf_string_upper_bound-copy-t.patch

The following patch is updated accordingly to apply cleanly on top of
1.6.30:

    dbus-1.6.8-dynamically-link-libdbus.patch -> dbus-1.6.30-dynamically-link-libdbus.patch

BUG= chromium:674286 
TEST=Remote trybot runs on paladin and release builders.

Change-Id: Ie2f42ff1773c1d629880c99202bb5c838d8a2bf1
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/426071
Commit-Ready: Ben Chan <benchan@chromium.org>
Tested-by: Ben Chan <benchan@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier@chromium.org>

[modify] https://crrev.com/031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86/sys-apps/dbus/Manifest
[add] https://crrev.com/031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86/sys-apps/dbus/dbus-1.6.30-r1.ebuild
[delete] https://crrev.com/991af939fce0e797bc0f41be444c0835f6690b31/sys-apps/dbus/files/dbus-1.6.8-_dbus_babysitter_unref-avoid-infinite-loop-if-waitpi.patch
[delete] https://crrev.com/991af939fce0e797bc0f41be444c0835f6690b31/sys-apps/dbus/files/dbus-1.6.8-_dbus_printf_string_upper_bound-copy-t.patch
[rename] https://crrev.com/031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86/sys-apps/dbus/files/dbus-1.6.30-dynamically-link-libdbus.patch
[rename] https://crrev.com/031fe339b867ac8ce9b7f6aa18b5c944052cad86/sys-apps/dbus/dbus-1.6.30.ebuild
[delete] https://crrev.com/991af939fce0e797bc0f41be444c0835f6690b31/sys-apps/dbus/dbus-1.6.8-r13.ebuild