Release strategy

Understanding the Gogs release strategy helps you plan upgrades safely and avoid breaking changes.

Semantic versioning

Starting with version 0.12.0, Gogs follows semantic versioning. Version numbers use the format MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH:

Version	Type	Description
0.12.0	Minor release	Introduces new features or breaking changes within 0.x
0.12.1	Patch release	First bug-fix release for the 0.12 series
0.12	Release series	Refers collectively to 0.12.0, 0.12.1, 0.12.2, etc.

Each minor release has its own release branch with the prefix release/. For example, release/0.12 is the branch for version 0.12.0 and all of its patch releases (0.12.1, 0.12.2, and so on).

Backwards compatibility

Upgrading from versions before 0.12

<Warning> If you are running any version of Gogs **below 0.12**, you must first upgrade to **0.12** before upgrading further. This version includes essential database migrations that later versions depend on. </Warning>

Upgrading from 0.12 and later

Gogs maintains backwards compatibility across one minor version at a time. Patch release numbers are disregarded when determining compatibility.

Supported upgrade paths:

From	To	Supported
0.12.0	0.13.0	Yes
0.12.1	0.13.4	Yes
0.12.4	0.14.0	No -- skips a minor version

<Info> Always upgrade **one minor version at a time**. For example, to go from `0.12` to `0.14`, first upgrade to `0.13`, verify everything works, and then upgrade to `0.14`. </Info>

Source build update frequency

<Tip> If you run Gogs from a source build rather than an official binary, update **at least once per week**. This prevents you from falling behind and potentially missing incremental database migrations that cannot be applied out of order. </Tip>