Litestar releases

Version numbering

Litestar follows the Semantic Versioning standard, using the <major>.<minor>.<patch> schema, increasing the version numbers as follows:

Major

Backwards incompatible changes have been made

Minor

Functionality was added, in a backwards compatible manner

Patch

Bugfixes were applied, in a backwards compatible manner

Pre-release versions

A major release may be preceded by a number of pre-releases. The pre-release identifier will be appended to the major version number and follow the schema <release type><release number>. The resulting version number will have the schema <major>.<minor>.<patch><release type><release number>, for example 2.0.0alpha1.

The release types are:

alpha

A developmental release, equivalent to the current status of the development branch. At this point, new features can still be added and breaking changes introduced. These releases should be considered very unstable and are intended for early developer feedback.

beta

A more stable development release. New features might be added at this point, but no major breaking changes are to be expected

rc

“Release candidate”. This is the first release after the feature freeze before a new major release. No new features and breaking changes will be introduced at this point, only bugfixes will be added at this point. This release is suitable for testing migration to the upcoming major release. Each major version will be preceded by at least one release candidate.

Release schedule

Litestar follows a non-strict release schedule, targeting 4 weeks between minor versions and about 1 year between major versions. For major versions, this is to be interpreted as a lower bound.

About major version

Starting with version 2.0, Litestar’s major releases are generally backwards compatible and usually won’t include major breaking changes. They can be seen as maintenance releases that offer the opportunity to make some backwards incompatible changes.

Due to the frequency of major releases, Litestar evolves gradually over time and there won’t be sweeping changes that require a complete rewrite of an application or major migration efforts when upgrading to a new major version.

Supported versions

Current version

The current version is the last release of the most recent major version. This version is under active development and will receive bugfixes as well as feature updates in minor releases (see Version numbering)

Maintenance versions

When a new major version is released, the last minor version before it enters maintenance mode. It will receive bugfixes and other critical patches during the next two release cycles

In practice this means that, at any given time, there may be up to 3 currently supported releases: The current version and the two major versions preceding it.

Deprecation policy

If a feature of Litestar is to be removed, a deprecation warning will be added in a minor release. Deprecated features will still be supported throughout every release of the respective major release. In practice this means that if a deprecation warning is added in 1.x, the feature will continue to work for every 1. release, and be removed in the 2.0 release.