Since version 1.0, Django’s release numbering works as follows:
In git, each Django release will have a tag indicating its version number, signed with the Django release key. Additionally, each release series has its own branch, called stable/A.B.x, and bugfix/security releases will be issued from those branches.
For more information about how the Django project issues new releases for security purposes, please see our security policies.
Major releases (A.B, A.B+1, etc.) will happen roughly every nine months – see release process, below for details. These releases will contain new features, improvements to existing features, and such.
A major release may deprecate certain features from previous releases. If a feature is deprecated in version A.B, it will continue to work in versions A.B and A.B+1 but raise warnings. It will be removed in version A.B+2.
So, for example, if we decided to start the deprecation of a function in Django 1.7:
Minor releases (A.B.C, etc.) will be issued as needed, often to fix security issues.
These releases will be 100% compatible with the associated major release, unless this is impossible for security reasons or to prevent data loss. So the answer to “should I upgrade to the latest minor release?” will always be “yes.”
At any moment in time, Django’s developer team will support a set of releases to varying levels. See the download page for the current state of support for each version.
The current development master will get new features and bug fixes requiring major refactoring.
Patches applied to the master branch must also be applied to the last major release, to be released as the next minor release, when they fix critical problems:
The rule of thumb is that fixes will be backported to the last major release for bugs that would have prevented a release in the first place (release blockers).
Security fixes and data loss bugs will be applied to the current master, the last two major releases, and the current LTS release.
Documentation fixes generally will be more freely backported to the last release branch. That’s because it’s highly advantageous to have the docs for the last release be up-to-date and correct, and the risk of introducing regressions is much less of a concern.
As a concrete example, consider a moment in time halfway between the release of Django 1.7 and 1.8. At this point in time:
Additionally, the Django team will occasionally designate certain releases to be “Long-term support” (LTS) releases. LTS releases will get security and data loss fixes applied for a guaranteed period of time, typically 3+ years, regardless of the pace of releases afterwards.
See the download page for the releases that have been designated for long-term support.
Django uses a time-based release schedule, with major (i.e. 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, etc.) releases every nine months, or more, depending on features.
After each release, and after a suitable cooling-off period of a few weeks, core developers will examine the landscape and announce a timeline for the next release. Most releases will be scheduled in the 6-9 month range, but if we have bigger features to develop we might schedule a longer period to allow for more ambitious work.
Each release cycle will be split into three periods, each lasting roughly one-third of the cycle:
The first phase of the release process will be devoted to figuring out what features to include in the next version. This should include a good deal of preliminary work on those features – working code trumps grand design.
At the end of part one, the core developers will propose a feature list for the upcoming release. This will be broken into:
Anything that hasn’t got at least some work done by the end of the first third isn’t eligible for the next release; a design alone isn’t sufficient.
The second third of the release schedule is the “heads-down” working period. Using the roadmap produced at the end of phase one, we’ll all work very hard to get everything on it done.
Longer release schedules will likely spend more than a third of the time in this phase.
At the end of phase two, any unfinished “maybe” features will be postponed until the next release. Though it shouldn’t happen, any “must-have” features will extend phase two, and thus postpone the final release.
Phase two will culminate with an alpha release. At this point, the stable/A.B.x branch will be forked from master.
The last third of a release cycle is spent fixing bugs – no new features will be accepted during this time. We’ll try to release a beta release after one month and a release candidate after two months.
The release candidate marks the string freeze, and it happens at least two weeks before the final release. After this point, new translatable strings must not be added.
During this phase, committers will be more and more conservative with backports, to avoid introducing regressions. After the release candidate, only release blockers and documentation fixes should be backported.
In parallel to this phase, master can receive new features, to be released in the A.B+1 cycle.
After a major release (e.g. A.B), the previous release will go into bugfix mode.
The branch for the previous major release (e.g. stable/A.B-1.x) will include bugfixes. Critical bugs fixed on master must also be fixed on the bugfix branch; this means that commits need to cleanly separate bug fixes from feature additions. The developer who commits a fix to master will be responsible for also applying the fix to the current bugfix branch.
Jul 20, 2015