I'm a long term user of ZFS on Linux and over pretty much all of the time I've used it, I've built it from the latest development version. Generally this means I update my ZoL build at the same time as I update my Fedora kernel, since a ZoL update requires a kernel reboot anyway. This is a little bit daring, of course, although the ZoL development version has generally been quite solid (and this way I get the latest features and improvements long before I otherwise would).

One of the things I do to make it less alarming is that I always keep backup copies of previous versions of ZFS on Linux, in the form of copies of the RPMs I install and update. Naturally I keep these backup copies in a non-ZFS filesystem, because I need to be able to get at them even if the new version of ZFS isn't working (possibly just with the new kernel, possibly in general). I haven't needed these backup copies very often, but on the rare occasions when I've had to revert, I was very glad that they were there.

(You don't always run into immediate failures to bring ZFS up; sometimes there are merely stability or other issues in a new development change, and you want to roll back to a previous one. In those cases it's okay to have the previous versions on a ZFS filesystem, because you can probably use ZFS enough to grab them.)

Not everyone uses development versions of ZFS on Linux, but I suggest that you keep backup copies of older versions even if you only use released ZoL versions. You never know when you may run into an issue and be glad that you have options.

(That I keep backup copies of previous versions and want to have them accessible outside of ZFS is one reason that I doubt I'll ever use ZFS on Linux on my root filesystem. System recovery is much easier in many scenarios if ZFS isn't required to at least boot the system, get it on the network, or access the root filesystem from a live CD.)

One obvious requirement here is that you should never update ZFS pool or filesystem features until you're absolutely sure that you'll never want to revert to a ZoL version that's too old to support those features. This generally makes me quite conservative about updating pool features; I want them to be in a ZoL release that's been out long enough to be considered fully stable.