Quarterly Releases
Liferay DXP releases should occur every quarter and will be called a Quarterly Release. These releases contain product maintenance, enhancements and new features. Each Quarterly Release should be treated as a new major version and will be maintained according to Liferay Service Life Policies. The Quarterly Releases should regularly be installed in order to receive the latest product maintenance and enhancements or to opt-in to the newly released features.
-
Product Maintenance: resolutions to product defects & security vulnerabilities which required a code change.
-
Product Enhancements: changes to the product that improve the quality or value and are non-disruptive or small improvements such as changes in the look and feel which do not require user behavior modification.
-
New Features: changes to the product that improve the quality or value and which could be disruptive to customer environments, require user behavior modification, or require specific guidelines. These New Features will be released using a release feature flag which enables the feature to be opt-in. New Features will have a release feature flag for a minimum of one release. With each subsequent quarterly release, feature flags will be assessed for removal. When a release feature flag is removed that previously released new features will become available out of the box. Beta and Development features will remain under a feature flag until those features are ready for General Availability.
The first Liferay DXP Quarterly Release was the 2023.Q3 Quarterly Release.
Patch Releases
Once a Quarterly Release is issued, regular patch releases will be periodically made from the Quarterly Release branch. Patch Releases are maintenance releases which should only contain resolutions to product defects & security vulnerabilities. Patch releases can contain small product enhancements in order to resolve product defects such as accessibility or look and feel issues. Patch releases should not contain new features or disruptive changes, breaking changes, or changes in feature flag statues unless such changes are necessary to resolve a security issue.
Each Patch Release should be treated as a new patch version and will be maintained according to Liferay Service Life Policies from the release date of the Quarterly Release.
Bi-Weekly Updates
In between Quarterly Releases, Liferay will regularly make updates available in the form of Docker images or bundled updates. These updates are a snapshot of the latest maintenance, development, and enhancements for the use of customers and community members who desire to preview upcoming enhancements, new development, or product maintenance. These updates are not recommended for production use. Product guidance and defect resolution will only be offered for Quarterly Releases, and their related Patch Releases available in Help Center..
Liferay Bundles
Liferay performs a complete bundle release that contains the entire product including updates and fixes. Liferay does not release a separate cumulative maintenance patch. By providing bundled versions of Liferay updates we can also provide the latest and most secure versions of Tomcat to mitigate risk.
Bundled releases are also accompanied by separate artifacts so that customers who are not working with our pre-packaged Tomcat bundles can deploy Liferay DXP on any application server compatible with that version of Liferay DXP. Since cumulative maintenance patches are not released a full deployment is required to update Liferay DXP.
Finally, bundled releases are accompanied by an updated docker image. For more information about the versioning, content, and support of Liferay docker images please see Liferay Docker Images.