SupportedVersions

Current and upcoming releases

Unsupported

Currently in support

Not yet released

A new major version of Mahara is released every 6 months, around April and October. From Mahara 1.0 to 1.10, these were numbered using a type of semantic versioning. Starting with the 15.04 release (after 1.10), they are numbered to reflect the date the release is scheduled (so "15.04" means "2015, April"). See Version Numbering Policy for more details.

The standard support lifetime of a major version is 18 months (3 release cycles):

• Receives bug fixes and security fixes for the first 6 months
• Receives security fixes only, for an additional 12 months

In the event that a major release substantially breaks backwards compatibility, we may declare the previous release to be an extended support release which will receive security fixes for 30 months (5 release cycles), in order to give sites more time to upgrade. 15.04 is our first extended support release, due to a complete overhaul of the Mahara theme system in 15.10 breaking compatibility for existing custom themes. Currently, there are no extended support releases planned.

Release number	Release date	End of support
19.04	April 2019
18.10	October 2018	April 2020
18.04	April 2018	October 2019
17.10	October 2017	April 2019
17.04	April 2017	October 2018
16.10	October 2016	April 2018
16.04	April 2016	October 2017
15.10	October 2015	April 2017
15.04	April 2015	October 2017 (extended support release due to 15.10 theme overhaul)
1.10	October 2014	April 2016
1.9	April 2014	October 2015
1.8	October 2013	April 2015
1.7	April 2013	October 2014
1.6	October 2012	April 2014

Older releases (pre Mahara 1.6)

Prior to Mahara 1.6, Mahara major versions were released as needed, according to no particular schedule. During the transition period to the 6 month release cycle, support for the older releases was provided for 2 release cycles.

Release number	Release date	End of support
1.5	April 2012	October 2013
1.4	June 2011	October 2012
1.3	Sept 2010	April 2012

Definition of support

Being "supported" means:

• The release team is committed to making available updates to Mahara that are security related. See Security to find out how to report security bugs to us.
• Occasionally, some other serious bug fixes will be included, but these are not guaranteed. If you find another type of bug, please let us know by reporting it on the mahara.org forums or directly on Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug

Specific backporting rules

When deciding which bugs to backport to supported branches, these are the general principles:

• Security bugs
  • All Critical and High priority security bugs should be backported.
  • Nearly all Medium and Low priority security bugs should be backported. At the maintenance team's discretion, these might not be backported if:
    • Backporting would be technically difficult due to differences between Mahara versions.
    • The bug fix requires database upgrades or dataroot manipulations.
    • The bug fix otherwise introduces a high risk of regressions.

• Non-security bugs
  • All Critical bugs should be backported.
  • Most High priority bugs should be backported. At the maintenance team's discretion, these might not be backported if:
    • Backporting would be technically difficult due to differences between Mahara versions.
    • The bug fix requires database upgrades or dataroot manipulations.
    • The bug fix otherwise introduces a high risk of regressions.
  • No Medium or Low priority non-security bugs are backported.
  • No Wishlist bugs are backported. Wishlist items are only added to the current development branch.

If you want to backport certain bug fixes or new features to your own instance of Mahara, you can do so on your own as the code is available.

See Bug Status:Importance for the guidelines on how we decide whether a bug is Critical, High, Medium, or Low.

See also

• 6MonthlyCycle
• Developer Area/Version Numbering Policy