Versioning and Support Lifecycle

Major Releases - represent major product changes, some of which are not backward-compatible (the jump from 7.6 to 8.7 for example). Rolling Upgrades for Enterprise and Ultimate Editions are not supported for major versions changes and assume a special upgrade procedure for production clusters. There is no particular release schedule for major versions.

Minor Releases - introduce new features and significant improvements. Thus, these releases are also called Feature Releases. For instance, 8.4, 8.5, 8.7 and 8.8 are examples of minor versions of series 8. Rolling Upgrades are supported for all minor releases unless there are any breaking changes. If Rolling Upgrades are not supported between two specific versions then GridGain provides a migration path that eliminates downtime via a transitioning version.

Maintenance Releases - deliver bug fixes, security patches, and performance optimizations. For instance, 8.7.3, 8.7.4, and 8.7.5 are examples of maintenance versions of series 8.7. Rolling Upgrades are supported similarly to minor releases as described above. Upgrades between maintenance versions of different minor series (for example, from 8.5.6 to 8.7.5) are supported as well unless there are any breaking changes. Usually, maintenance versions are released once a month.

Patch Releases - deliver critical patches to Maintenance versions. This type of release is used to address critical issues without impacting other functionality. It is released in exceptional cases to mitigate production risks. Only GridGain team can propose to release a patch based on risks analysis. All patch releases are named using the Major.Minor.Maintenance-Patch naming convention (for example, 8.5.6-p1).