Release Philosophy

The Apache CloudStack community uses a time-based approach to it's feature releases, with as-needed (i.e.: less formal schedule) for incremental bug-fix releases in between these feature releases. Our goal is to have a consistent schedule for new features to be merged into the master branch, along with

Schedule

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Versioning Numbering

Starting with our 4.0.0-incubating release, Apache CloudStack makes use of Semantic Versioning for it's release numbering. One exception to this numbering scheme, is that the "-incubating" qualifier will be added to all release numbers until the project graduates from the Apache Incubator (this is specifically due to the rules stated in the Guide to Release Management During Incubation).

For those that may not be familiar with Semantic Versioning, the number format is: X.Y.Z, where X is the major version, Y is the minor version, Z is the patch number. The community strives to ensure backward API compatibility within each major version (i.e.: code written against the CloudStack 4.0.0-incubating API should work with all future 4.y.z versions). 

The community may decide to increment the major version number in situations where underlying implementation details require a operator to face significant challenges in upgrading from one version to the next.  These should be rare situations.

Support Lifetime

TBD

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