solana/rfcs/0005-branches-tags-and-channels.md

========================= master branch (edge channel) =======================>
         \                      \                     \
          \___v0.7.0 tag         \                     \
           \                      \         v0.9.0 tag__\
            \          v0.8.0 tag__\                     \
 v0.7.1 tag__\                      \                 v0.9 branch (beta channel)
              \___v0.7.2 tag         \___v0.8.1 tag
               \                      \
                \                      \
           v0.7 branch         v0.8 branch (stable channel)

Branches and Tags

master branch

All new development occurs on the master branch.

Bug fixes that affect a vX.Y branch are first made on master. This is to allow a fix some soak time on master before it is applied to one or more stabilization branches.

Merging to master first also helps ensure that fixes applied to one release are present for future releases. (Sometimes the joy of landing a critical release blocker in a branch causes you to forget to propagate back to master!)"

Once the bug fix lands on master it is cherry-picked into the vX.Y branch and potentially the vX.Y-1 branch. The exception to this rule is when a bug fix for vX.Y doesn't apply to master or vX.Y-1.

Immediately after a new stabilization branch is forged, the Cargo.toml minor version (Y) in the master branch is incremented by the release engineer. Incrementing the major version of the master branch is outside the scope of this document.

vX.Y stabilization branches

These are stabilization branches for a given milestone. They are created off the master branch as late as possible prior to the milestone release.

vX.Y.Z release tag

The release tags are created as desired by the owner of the given stabilization branch, and cause that X.Y.Z release to be shipped to https://crates.io, https://snapcraft.io/, and elsewhere.

Immediately after a new vX.Y.Z branch tag has been created, the Cargo.toml patch version number (Z) of the stabilization branch is incremented by the release engineer.

Channels

Channels are used by end-users (humans and bots) to consume the branches described in the previous section, so they may automatically update to the most recent version matching their desired stability.

There are three release channels that map to branches as follows:

• edge - tracks the master branch, least stable.
• beta - tracks the largest (and latest) vX.Y stabilization branch, more stable.
• stable - tracks the second largest vX.Y stabilization branch, most stable.