1. the stable release which only supports RSA-2048 keys (giving it RSA-4096 keys resulted in really bizarre errors like "read public key file failed: Operation now in progress"), and
2. the unstable release which does not compile on my system because of broken dependencies (and even if I got it to work, I have huge reservations about using unstable releases of cryptographic systems).
Am I missing something?
I don't believe this is something wireguard cares about. It looks like they're aiming for doing in-kernel build-your-own routing VPN solution for servers where the networking is completely within your control. If you need a solution for privacy / working around provider limitations, then other software may be better.
tl;dr keepalives and the expectation of a statefull firewall keeping things open.
Combined with touting IP roaming as a feature, I think it is something wireguard cares about.
Also you can configure haproxy to do the same.
I've gotten used to just setup tinc on all my machines automatically with puppet and it's really nice to have an overlay VPN over the internet that is peer-to-peer instead of having to route everything through a central server. The only thing I miss is better firewall piercing. The easiest way is to just move tinc to 443 but that won't work for servers where I actually want to serve HTTPS.
[1] http://www.tinc-vpn.org/