Active development is happening on the main branch, and a new version is released from it.
Stable releases of Envoy include:
- Major releases in which a new version a created directly from the
mainbranch. - Minor releases for versions covered by the extended maintenance window (any version released in the last 12 months).
- Security fixes backported from the
mainbranch (including those deemed not worthy of creating a CVE). - Stability fixes backported from the
mainbranch (anything that can result in a crash, including crashes triggered by a trusted control plane). - Bugfixes, deemed worthwhile by the maintainers of stable releases.
- Security fixes backported from the
Major releases happen quartely and follow the schedule below. Security fixes typically happen quarterly as well, but this depends on the number and severity of security bugs. Other releases are ad-hoc and best-effort.
Hand-off to the maintainers of stable releases happens after Envoy maintainers release a new
version from the main branch by creating a vX.Y.0 tag and a corresponding release/vX.Y
branch, with merge permissions given to the release manager of stable releases, and CI configured
to execute tests on it.
Critical security fixes are owned by the Envoy security team, which provides fixes for the
main branch. Once those fixes are ready, the maintainers
of stable releases backport them to the remaining supported stable releases.
All other security and reliability fixes can be nominated for backporting to stable releases
by Envoy maintainers, Envoy security team, the change author, or members of the Envoy community
by adding the backport/review or backport/approved label (this can be done using [repokitteh]'s
/backport command). Changes nominated by the change author and/or members of the Envoy community
are evaluated for backporting on a case-by-case basis, and require approval from either the release
manager of stable release, Envoy maintainers, or Envoy security team. Once approved, those fixes
are backported from the main branch to all supported stable branches by the maintainers of
stable releases. New stable versions from non-critical security fixes are released on a regular
schedule, initially aiming for the bi-weekly releases.
Major releases are handled by the maintainer on-call and do not involve any backports. The details are outlined in the "Cutting a major release" section below. Security releases are handled by a Release Manager and a Fix Lead. The Release Manager is responsible for approving and merging backports, with responsibilties outlined in BACKPORTS.md. The Fix Lead is a member of the security team and is responsible for coordinating the overall release. This includes identifying issues to be fixed in the release, communications with the Envoy community, and the actual mechanics of the release itself.
| Quarter | Release Manager | Fix Lead |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 Q1 | Piotr Sikora (PiotrSikora) | |
| 2020 Q2 | Piotr Sikora (PiotrSikora) | |
| 2020 Q3 | Yuchen Dai (lambdai) | |
| 2020 Q4 | Christoph Pakulski (cpakulski) | |
| 2021 Q1 | Rei Shimizu (Shikugawa) | |
| 2021 Q2 | Dmitri Dolguikh (dmitri-d) | |
| 2021 Q3 | Takeshi Yoneda (mathetake) | |
| 2021 Q4 | Otto van der Schaaf (oschaaf) | |
| 2022 Q1 | Otto van der Schaaf (oschaaf) | Ryan Hamilton (RyanTheOptimist) |
| 2022 Q2 | Pradeep Rao (pradeepcrao) | Matt Klein (mattklein123 |
| 2022 Q4 | Can Cecen (cancecen) | Tony Allen (tonya11en) |
In order to accommodate downstream projects, new Envoy releases are produced on a fixed release schedule (the 15th day of each quarter), with an acceptable delay of up to 2 weeks, with a hard deadline of 3 weeks.
| Version | Expected | Actual | Difference | End of Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.12.0 | 2019/09/30 | 2019/10/31 | +31 days | 2020/10/31 |
| 1.13.0 | 2019/12/31 | 2020/01/20 | +20 days | 2021/01/20 |
| 1.14.0 | 2020/03/31 | 2020/04/08 | +8 days | 2021/04/08 |
| 1.15.0 | 2020/06/30 | 2020/07/07 | +7 days | 2021/07/07 |
| 1.16.0 | 2020/09/30 | 2020/10/08 | +8 days | 2021/10/08 |
| 1.17.0 | 2020/12/31 | 2021/01/11 | +11 days | 2022/01/11 |
| 1.18.0 | 2021/03/31 | 2021/04/15 | +15 days | 2022/04/15 |
| 1.19.0 | 2021/06/30 | 2021/07/13 | +13 days | 2022/07/13 |
| 1.20.0 | 2021/09/30 | 2021/10/05 | +5 days | 2022/10/05 |
| 1.21.0 | 2022/01/15 | 2022/01/12 | -3 days | 2023/01/12 |
| 1.22.0 | 2022/04/15 | 2022/04/15 | 0 days | 2023/04/15 |
| 1.23.0 | 2022/07/15 | 2022/07/15 | 0 days | 2023/07/15 |
| 1.24.0 | 2022/10/15 | 2022/10/19 | +4 days | 2023/10/19 |
| 1.25.0 | 2023/01/15 | 2023/01/18 | +3 days | 2024/01/18 |
| 1.26.0 | 2023/04/15 | 2023/04/18 | +3 days | 2024/04/18 |
| 1.27.0 | 2023/07/14 |
- Take a look at open issues tagged with the current release, by searching for "is:open is:issue milestone:[current milestone]" and either hold off until they are fixed or bump them to the next milestone.
- Begin marshalling the ongoing PR flow in this repo. Ask maintainers to hold off merging any particularly risky PRs until after the release is tagged. This is because we aim for main to be at release candidate quality at all times.
- Do a final check of the release notes:
- Make any needed corrections (grammar, punctuation, formatting, etc.).
- Check to see if any security/stable version release notes are duplicated in the major version release notes. These should not be duplicated.
- Switch the repo to "release" mode by running
bazel run @envoy_repo//:release. See the project tool for further information. This tool will create a commit with the necessary changes for a release. - Update the RELEASES doc with the relevant dates. Now, or after you cut the release, please also make sure there's a stable maintainer signed up for next quarter, and the deadline for the next release is documented in the release schedule.
- Get a review and merge.
- Create a pull request with the commit created by the project tool and wait for tests to pass.
- Once the tests have passed, and the PR has landed, CI will automatically create the tagged release.
- From the envoy landing page use the branch drop-down to create a branch
using the minor version from the tagged release, e.g.
1.6.0->release/v1.6. It will be used for the stable releases. - Tagging will kick off another run of AZP postsubmit. Monitor that tag build to make sure that the final docker images get pushed along with the final docs and release assets. The final documentation will end up in the envoy-website repository.
- Update the website (example PR) with the new release version.
- Craft a witty/uplifting email and send it to all the email aliases: envoy-announce@ envoy-users@ envoy-dev@ envoy-maintainers
- Make sure we tweet the new release: either have Matt do it or email social@cncf.io and ask them to do an Envoy account post.
- Switch the repo back to "dev" mode by running
bazel run @envoy_repo//:dev. See the project tool for further information. This tool will create a commit with the necessary changes to continue development. - Create a pull request with commit created by the project tool.
- Run the deprecate_versions.py script (
bazel run //tools/deprecate_version:deprecate_version)
There is no fixed scheduled for security fixes. Zero-day vulnerabilities might necessitate an emergency release with little or no warning. However, historically security release have happened roughly once per quarter, midway between major releases.