Release Policy

CAS follows the below release strategy in determining the kinds of changes different releases can accommodate and how lines of development are managed. CAS adopters can also expect the following for each release type. All new improvements, fixes, enhancements, and changes are weighed against the release strategy for consideration in future release.

:warning: Stop Coding

It is in your best interest to try and avoid making changes to the internals of the CAS software, to make future upgrades relatively easy and painless. The more you modify the inner workings of CAS to implement and deliver custom use cases, the more trouble it would be for the deployment down the road as you would face configuration and API changes. Being a single parent is tough, so avoid carrying the maintenance burden solely on your own. Consider discussing and sharing use cases with the community and contribute changes back so as to let your deployment simply become a consumer, and not an owner, of such changes down the road.

Schedules

The project release schedule is available here. The maintenance policy is also available.

SECURITY

Security releases are a critical minimal change on a release to address a serious confirmed security issue. That is, 2.5.0.1 would be 2.5.0 with a minimal change to patch a vulnerability. All adopters are strongly urged to upgrade to a SECURITY releases as soon as possible. CAS overlays should build with no changes, unless required and highlighted in the release notes.

No third-party library updates take place in a security release, unless there exists is solid evidence to demonstrate and require the need and the effort for a package upgrade. See this guide for more info.

PATCH

A conservative incremental improvement that includes bug fixes, enhancements and new features and is absolutely backward compatible with previous PATCH releases of the same MINOR release. (i.e. 2.4.15 is a drop in replacement for 2.4.14, 2.4.13, 2.4.12, etc.). Adopters can expect that major APIs, integration points, default behavior, and general configuration is mostly the same. CAS overlays should build with little to no changes, unless required and highlighted in the release notes and change logs.

No third-party library updates take place in a patch release, unless there exists is solid evidence to demonstrate and require the need and the effort for a package upgrade. See this guide for more info.

FEATURE

An evolutionary incremental improvement that includes all PATCH release improvements along with fixes and enhancements that could not easily be accommodated without breaking backward compatibility or changing default behavior. (i.e. Transitioning from 3.4.x to 3.5.x, etc.) Adopters can expect general improvements that require moderate changes in APIs, integration points, default behavior, and general configuration. Overall the CAS server code along the MINOR development line looks pretty much the same from release to release with clear moderate evolutionary changes. FEATURE releases may have a theme or focus that helps coordinate development. CAS overlays may require minor to moderate changes, some APIs may have changed or been deprecated, default behavior and configuration may have changed. While implementation APIs may change, CAS APIs will remain unchanged between FEATURE release versions.

Third-party library updates are acceptable for feature releases. However, library updates that lead to a change in platform requirements (i.e. Java, OS, Server Container) are ignored.

MAJOR

A revolutionary change accommodating sweeping architecture, approach, and implementation changes. (i.e. Transitioning from 3.5.x to 4.0.x, etc.) Significant changes in APIs, default behavior, and configuration can be expected. Overlays may require significant changes and possibly a complete reworking. Overall the CAS server code line may look markedly different and integration points may require reworking.

Third-party library updates are acceptable for feature releases, including changes that might lead to an upgrade of platform requirements (i.e. Java, OS, Server Container).