This document describes the versioning and release process of Firefly III. This document is a living document, contents will be updated according to each release.
Firefly III releases will be versioned using dotted triples, similar to [Semantic Version](http://semver.org/). For this specific document, we will refer to the respective components of this triple as `<major>.<minor>.<patch>`. The version number may have additional information, such as "-alpha.1", "-beta.2" to mark alpha and beta versions for earlier access. Such releases will be considered as "pre-releases".
Major and minor releases of Firefly III will be tagged in `main` when the release reaches the necessary state. The tag format should follow `<major>.<minor>.0`. For example, once the release `5.0.0` is no longer pre-release, a tag will be created with the format `5.0.0` and the new version will be released. The Docker images will be updated shortly after.
### Patch releases
Patch releases are based on the major/minor release tag. The release speed is one week to solve critical community and security issues; the cadency for other issues is on-demand driven based on the severity of the issue to be fixed.
### Pre-releases
The different alpha and beta builds will be compiled from their corresponding tags. Please note they are done to assist in the stabilization process. If it breaks you get to keep both parts.
1. 1.0.x patch releases are always compatible with its major and minor version. For example, previous released 1.8.x can be upgraded to most recent 1.8.4 release. This may be important for API users.
2. Firefly III supports upgrading over minor or major versions. Starting from version 4.8.2, you can always upgrade directly to the latest version.
