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Node.js Release Working Group

Release schedule

Release Status Codename Initial Release Active LTS Start Maintenance LTS Start End-of-life
6.x Maintenance LTS Boron 2016-04-26 2016-10-18 2018-04-30 2019-04-30
8.x Maintenance LTS Carbon 2017-05-30 2017-10-31 2019-01-01 December 20191
10.x Active LTS Dubnium 2018-04-24 2018-10-30 April 2020 April 2021
11.x Current Release 2018-10-23 June 2019
12.x Pending 2019-04-23 October 2019 April 2021 April 2022

Dates are subject to change.

  • 1: The 8.x Maintenance LTS cycle is currently scheduled to expire early on December 31, 2019 to align with the scheduled End-of-Life of OpenSSL-1.0.2.

LTS Schedule

The Release schedule is available also as a JSON file.

End-of-Life Releases

Release Status Codename Initial Release Active LTS Start Maintenance LTS Start End-of-life
v0.10.x End-of-Life - 2013-03-11 - 2015-10-01 2016-10-31
v0.12.x End-of-Life - 2015-02-06 - 2016-04-01 2016-12-31
4.x End-of-Life Argon 2015-09-08 2015-10-01 2017-04-01 2018-04-30
5.x End-of-Life 2015-10-29 2016-06-30
7.x End-of-Life 2016-10-25 2017-06-30
9.x End-of-Life 2017-10-01 2018-06-30

Mandate

The Release working group's purpose is:

  • Management/execution of the release and support process for all releases.

Its responsibilities are:

  • Define the release process.
  • Define the content of releases.
  • Generate and create releases.
  • Test Releases
  • Manage the LTS and Current branches including backporting changes to these branches.
  • Define the policy for what gets backported to release streams.

The Release working group is structured into teams and membership in the working group does not automatically result in membership in these teams. These teams are:

  • Releasers team
  • LTS team
  • CITGM team

The releasers team is entrusted with the secrets and CI access to be able build and sign releases. Additions to the releasers team must be approved by the TSC following the process outlined in GOVERNANCE.md.

The Long Term Support (LTS) team manages the process/content of LTS releases and the required backporting for these releases. Additions to the LTS team needs sign off from the rest of the LTS team.

The Canary in the Gold Mine (CITGM) team maintains CITGM as one of the key sanity checks for releases. This team maintains the CITGM repository and works to keep CITGM builds running and passing regularly. This also includes maintaining the CI jobs in collaboration with the Build Working Group.

Release Plan

New semver-major releases of Node.js are cut from master every six months. New even-numbered versions (e.g. v6, v8, v10, etc) are cut in April. New odd-numbered versions (e.g. v5, v7, v9) are cut in October.

When a new odd-numbered major release is cut, the previous even-numbered major version transitions to the Long Term Support plan.

Every major version covered by the LTS plan will be actively maintained for a period of 18 months from the date it enters LTS coverage. Following those 18 months of active support, the major version will transition into "maintenance" mode for 12 additional months.

The exact date that a release stream will be moved to LTS, moved between LTS modes, or deprecated will be chosen no later than the first day of the month. If it is to be changed, it will be done with no less than 14 days notice.

Given this schedule, there will be no more than two active LTS releases at any given time, overlapping for a maximum period of six months.

Once a major version enters LTS coverage, new features (semver-minor) may only be landed with consent of the Release working group. No semver-major changes other than those required for critical security fixes may be landed.

Changes in an LTS-covered major version are limited to:

  1. Bug fixes;
  2. Security updates;
  3. Non-semver-major npm updates;
  4. Relevant documentation updates;
  5. Certain performance improvements where the risk of breaking existing applications is minimal;
  6. Changes that introduce large amount of code churn where the risk of breaking existing applications is low and where the change in question may significantly ease the ability to backport future changes due to the reduction in diff noise.

Generally changes are expected to live in a Current release for at least 2 weeks before being backported. It is possible for a commit to land earlier at the discretion of the Release working group and the maintainers of the LTS branches.

Once a release moves into Maintenance mode, only critical bugs, critical security fixes, documentation updates, and updates to ensure consistency and usability of the N-API across LTS releases will be permitted. Unless a change is urgent it will be planned into a release once per quarter. Such releases will only be made when necessary.

Note that while it is possible that critical security and bug fixes may lead to semver-major changes landing within an LTS stream, such situations will be rare and will land as semver-minor bumps in the LTS covered version.

Updates to ensure consistency and usability of the N-API across LTS releases are allowed as it is important to ensure that N-API native modules can be used across LTS versions in order to support adoption.

All LTS releases will be assigned a codename. A list of expected upcoming codenames is available in CODENAMES.md.

An odd-numbered major release will cease to be actively updated when the subsequent even-numbered major release is cut. Depending on circumstances the project may decide to provide an update to the odd-numbered release after the cutoff. However, there is no guarantee that any release will be made.

LTS Staging Branches

Every LTS major version has two branches in the GitHub repository: a release branch and a staging branch. The release branch is used to cut new releases. Only members of the @nodejs/releasers team should land commits onto release branches. The staging branch is used to land cherry-picked or backported commits from master that need to be included in a future release. Only members of @nodejs/backporters should land commits onto staging branches.

For example, for Node.js v4, there is a v4.x branch and a v4.x-staging branch. When commits land in master that must be cherry-picked for a future Node.js v4 release, those must be landed into the v4.x-staging branch. When commits are backported for a future Node.js v4 release, those must come in the form of pull requests opened against the v4.x-staging branch. Commits are only landed in the v4.x branch when a new v4.x release is being prepared.

The working group members are the union of the LTS, Releasers and CITGM team members listed below.

LTS Team members

Backporters team

Releasers team

CITGM team

Emeritus

LTS Team members

CITGM team

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Node.js Foundation Long-term Support Working Group

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