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Development roadmap

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.. _roadmap:

=================== Development roadmap

This document outlines Fabric's intended development path. Please make sure you're reading the latest version <https://fabfile.org/roadmap.html>_ of this document, and also see the page about :ref:upgrading <upgrading> if you are migrating from version 1 to versions 2 or above.

.. seealso:: The primary project maintainer keeps an overall roadmap <https://bitprophet.org/projects#roadmap>__ on his website, which can help contextualize when Fabric may get its next update.

Fabric 2 and above

Modern Fabric versions (2+) receive active feature and bugfix development:

  • 2.0: Initial public release, arguably a technology preview and a packaging/upgrade trial. Intent is to act as a jolt for users of 1.x who aren't pinning their dependencies (sorry, folks!), enable installation via PyPI so users don't have to install via Git to start upgrading, and generally get everything above-board and iterating in classic semantic versioning fashion.
  • 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc: Implement the most pressing "missing features", including features which were present in 1.0 (see :ref:upgrading for details on these) as well as any brand new features we've been wanting in 2.x for a while (though most of these will come via Invoke and/or Paramiko releases -- see note below for more).
  • 3.0, 4.0, etc: Subsequent major releases will not be full-on rewrites as 2.0 was, but will be small (feature-release-sized) releases that just happen to contain one or more backwards incompatible API changes. These will be clearly marked in the changelog and reflected in the upgrading documentation.

.. note:: Many features that you may use via Fabric will only need development in the libraries Fabric wraps -- Invoke <https://pyinvoke.org>_ and Paramiko <https://paramiko.org>_ -- and unless Fabric itself needs changes to match, you can often get new features by upgrading only one of the three. Make sure to check the other projects' changelogs periodically!

Fabric 1.x

Fabric 1.x has reached a tipping point regarding internal tech debt, lack of testability & ability to make improvements without harming backwards compatibility. As such, the 1.x line now receives bugfixes only. We strongly encourage all users to :ref:upgrade <upgrading> to Fabric 2.x.