Grouper Versioning and Support Policy

The Grouper project follows these guidelines on support of previous releases.


Semantic versioning: In 2023 Grouper adopted "semantic versioning".  (similar to semver). See below for details.

Versioning

The Grouper development team strives to maintain permanent backward compatibility of the core API / WS across all releases.

Support

Current and the previous releases will receive active support and security updates by the core development team. As of 2023, that means

Overview

Advice for Implementers

More on the release cycle


References used in writing this policy

-Shibboleth Project: https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/SHIB2/ProductVersioning

-Linux Kernel Project: https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

-Samba Project: http://www.samba.org/samba/devel/


Semantic versioning (v4+)

In 2023, Grouper adopted "semantic versioning".  (similar to semver)

The development, upgrades, and releases are not really affected, but the numbering of the versions has changed.

We  stopped using a fourth number.  We had previously used the fourth number for a container release where the maven version does not change, but we will just use the next third number, and skip that version in Maven. 

Pure semantic versioning only applies to Long Term Support (LTS) releases.  The latest Grouper major version has new enhancements until it is complete and stable.  The major version will not be incremented until the enhancements are done (e.g. over a year).

For instance if this is an LTS version: v6.1.8
6 = major version (incompatible changes will bump this number)
1 = minor version (backwards compatible changes)
8 = patch (backwards compatible bug/security fixes)

For instance if this is the enhancement version: v5.1.6
5 = major version (will stay at 5)
1 = minor version (incompatible changes or backwards compatible changes)
6 = patch (backwards compatible bug/security fixes)

If there is a security fix in an LTS version that causes incompatible changes, it will be documented.  For instance if we need to change a 3rd party library we will do so in a way that is the least risky and disruptive, but it might require some configuration changes or change in functionality.  The defaults for all configuration should not change.

The release path for a major version is still linear. 


See Also

Grouper Security Patches

Grouper 2.5+ packaging and versioning