RELEASES.md


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OpenZFS uses the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning scheme described
here:

MAJOR - Incremented at the discretion of the OpenZFS developers
to indicate a particularly noteworthy feature or change. An increase in
MAJOR number does not indicate any incompatible on-disk format change.
The ability to import a ZFS pool is controlled by the feature flags
enabled on the pool and the feature flags supported by the installed
OpenZFS version. Increasing the MAJOR version is expected to be an
infrequent occurrence.
MINOR - Incremented to indicate new functionality such as a new
feature flag, pool/dataset property, zfs/zpool sub-command, new
user/kernel interface, etc. MINOR releases may introduce incompatible
changes to the user space library APIs (libzfs.so). Existing user/kernel
interfaces are considered to be stable to maximize compatibility between
OpenZFS releases. Additions to the user/kernel interface are backwards
compatible.
PATCH - Incremented when applying documentation updates,
important bug fixes, minor performance improvements, and kernel
compatibility patches. The user space library APIs and user/kernel
interface are considered to be stable. PATCH releases for a MAJOR.MINOR
are published as needed.

Two release branches are maintained for OpenZFS, they are:

OpenZFS LTS - A designated MAJOR.MINOR release with periodic
PATCH releases that incorporate important changes backported from newer
OpenZFS releases. This branch is intended for use in environments using
an LTS, enterprise, or similarly managed kernel (RHEL, Ubuntu LTS,
Debian). Minor changes to support these distribution kernels will be
applied as needed. New kernel versions released after the OpenZFS LTS
release are not supported. LTS releases will receive patches for at
least 2 years. The current LTS release is OpenZFS 2.1.
OpenZFS current - Tracks the newest MAJOR.MINOR release. This
branch includes support for the latest OpenZFS features and recently
releases kernels. When a new MINOR release is tagged the previous MINOR
release will no longer be maintained (unless it is an LTS release). New
MINOR releases are planned to occur roughly annually.