Smack Release Life Cycle

Note: This plan is subject to change and not a strict policy that is followed. It is a guidance No guarantees are given about the availability of a release. For example, the Smack 4.4 release was delayed by over 12 months.

• 1 year alpha phase (the "merge window")
• branch codebase
• 6 months beta phase (some API changes possible)
• merge beta branch into master (if there where changes)
• 3 months release candidate phase (no more changes besides bugfixes)
• release

Quartal	Alpha	Beta	RC	Stable	Old Stable
2016-Q4	-	4.2	-	4.1	-
2017-Q1	4.3	-	4.2	4.1	-
2017-Q2	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2017-Q3	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2017-Q4	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2018-Q1	4.4	4.3	-	4.2	-
2018-Q2	4.4.	-	4.3	4.2	-
2018-Q3	4.4.	-	-	4.3	4.2
2018-Q4	4.4	-	-	4.3	4.2
2019-Q1	4.4	-	-	4.3	-
2019-Q2	4.4	-	-	4.3	-
2019-Q3	4.5	-	-	4.3	-
2019-Q4	4.5	-	-	4.3	-
2020-Q1	4.5	4.4	-	4.3	-
2020-Q2	4.5	4.4	-	4.3	-
2020-Q3	4.5	-	4.4	4.3	-
2020-Q3	4.5	-	4.4	4.3	-
2020-Q4	4.5	-	4.4	4.3	-
2021-Q1	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2021-Q2	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2021-Q3	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2021-Q4	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2022-Q1	4.6	4.5	-	4.4	4.3