Release Policy

We maintain four release channels to balance the introduction of new features with the necessity of production stability: Canary, Nightly, Stable, and LTS.

1. Long-Term Support (LTS)

The Production Standard. This version is released every June and remains supported through May of the following year.

Priority: Maximum reliability and uptime.
Updates: Restricted to security patches and critical bug fixes.
Restrictions: No new features or breaking changes are introduced during the lifecycle.
Version Tag: X.Y.Z-lts

2. Stable

The Interim Track. This channel provides a middle ground for users who need new features sooner than the annual LTS cycle allows.

Priority: Feature availability with validated stability.
Lifecycle: Short-lived; support ends immediately when a newer Stable or LTS version is released.
Updates: Receives security fixes and general bug fixes.
Version Tag: X.Y.Z-stable

3. Nightly / Pre-release

The Development Track. This is the staging ground for features and improvements before they are promoted to a Stable or LTS release.

Nightly: Continuous builds generated from the active development branch.
Pre-release: Beta candidates intended to finalize the next major release.
Note: These builds are subject to breaking changes and are not recommended for production.

4. Canary

The Bleeding Edge. Every build from our CI/CD pipeline lands here first for immediate validation.

Purpose: Early bug detection and rapid testing.
Stability: Highly unstable; used for developer testing only.
Version Tag: X.Y.Z-canary

Development Workflow & Branching

Main Branch: Active development. This is where all new features and breaking changes originate.
LTS Branch: A restricted, hardened branch. Only security fixes and critical patches are cherry-picked from Main.
Stable Branch: A snapshots of Main that has passed Nightly validation but is not yet part of the annual LTS cycle.
Canary: Automated builds triggered directly by the CI/CD pipeline.

The Yearly Cycle

Continuous: All changes land in Canary first.
Stabilization: Validated Canary builds move to Nightly/Pre-release.
Intermediate: Selected Nightly builds are promoted to the Stable channel between LTS releases.
May: Code freeze. Final stabilization begins for the upcoming annual LTS.
June: New LTS launch. The previous LTS reaches End-of-Life (EOL).

Current Status

Current Production Release (LTS)

Version: v2.1 (Astral Ocelot)
Support: June 2025 – May 2026
Status: Recommended for all production environments.

Upcoming Release

Version: v2.2 (Quantum Falcon)
Target: June 2026
Status: In development. This will become the recommended production version upon release.