Supported releases

Release support and upgrade policies

Introduction

This topic details the supported versions of Dapr releases, the upgrade policies and how deprecations and breaking changes are communicated.

Dapr releases use MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning. For example 1.0.0

• A PATCH version is incremented for bug and security hot fixes.
• A MINOR version is updated as part of the regular release cadence, including new features, bug and security fixes.
• A MAJOR version is updated when there’s a non-backward compatible change to the runtime, such as an API change. A MAJOR release can also occur then there is a considered a significant addition/change of functionality that needs to differentiate from the previous version.

A supported release means;

• A hoxfix patch is released if the release has a critical issue such as a mainline broken scenario or a security issue. Each of these are reviewed on a case by case basis.
• Issues are investigated for the supported releases. If a release is no longer supported, you need to upgrade to a newer release and determine if the issue is still relevant.

From the 1.0.0 release onwards two (2) versions of Dapr are supported; the current and previous versions. Typically these are MINORrelease updates. This means that there is a rolling window that moves forward for supported releases and it is your operational responsibility to remain up to date with these supported versions. If you have an older version of Dapr you may have to do intermediate upgrades to get to a supported version.

There will be at least 6 weeks between major.minor version releases giving users a 12 week (3 month) rolling window for upgrading.

Patch support is for supported versions (current and previous).

Supported versions

The table below shows the versions of Dapr releases that have been tested together and form a “packaged” release. Any other combinations of releases are not supported.

Upgrade paths

After the 1.0 release of the runtime there may be situations where it is necessary to explicitly upgrade through an additional release to reach the desired target. For example an upgrade from v1.0 to v1.2 may need go pass through v1.1

The table below shows the tested upgrade paths for the Dapr runtime. For example you are able to upgrade from 1.0-rc4 to the 1.0 release. Any other combinations of upgrades have not been tested.

Feature and deprecations

There is a process for announcing feature deprecations. Deprecations are applied two (2) releases after the release in which they were announced. For example Feature X is announced to be deprecated in the 1.0.0 release notes and will then be removed in 1.2.0.

Deprecations appear in release notes under a section named “Deprecations”, which indicates:

• The point in the future the now-deprecated feature will no longer be supported. For example release x.y.z. This is at least two (2) releases prior.
• Document any steps the user must take to modify their code, operations, etc if applicable in the release notes.

After announcing a future breaking change, the change will happen in 2 releases or 6 months, whichever is greater. Deprecated features should respond with warning but do nothing otherwise.

Here is an example, using a hypothetical 1.1.0 as the deprecation announcement release.

Upgrade on Hosting platforms

Dapr can support multiple hosting platforms for production. With the 1.0 release the two supported platforms are Kubernetes and physical machines. For Kubernetes upgrades see Production guidelines on Kubernetes

Related links

• Read the Versioning policy

Last modified March 18, 2021: Merge pull request #1321 from dapr/aacrawfi/logos (9a399d5)