Release Planning

This page provides information about GNOME’s release processes. Release planning is the responsibility of the Release Team, which maintains this page.

Release Cycle & Schedule

The GNOME Project uses a time-based release cycle, with a new stable version being released every six months (around March and September each year). Notes for each stable release can be found at release.gnome.org.

Branches & Freezes

When and where code changes can happen in each release cycle:

  • Development typically happens on main branches, and main branches are typically open for changes to be merged for the majority of each cycle.

  • A series of development releases are created in the run up to each stable release. These are used for testing and are included in the unstable releases of some Linux distributions.

  • A number of freezes come into effect as each stable release approaches. These limit the scope of changes that can be made. While the freezes are in effect, it can often be more difficult to have code changes merged (since most modules don’t create stable branches until after the GNOME stable release).

  • Once a stable version is released, each module creates a new stable branch, so that development can continue on the main branch.

For the dates of the releases and freezes in the current development cycle, see the release schedule.

Versioning

Stable releases have a version number which is a whole integer. For example: 40.0, 41.0, 42.0.

Stable releases may be followed by stable update releases, whose version numbers have a single decimal point. For example: 40.1, 40.2, 41.1, 41.2.

Each development cycle includes three unstable development releases. These have the same version number as the stable release of that development cycle, with either an alpha, beta, or rc (release candidate) suffix. For example: 40.alpha, 40.beta, 40.rc.

This versioning schema was first introduced for GNOME 40. Previous GNOME releases used even point versions for stable releases (for example: 3.12, 3.14, 3.16) and odd point versions for unstable releases (for example: 3.13, 3.15, 3.17).

What’s Included in Each Release

The modules that are released as part of each GNOME version are defined in the gnome-build-meta. They include the:

  • libraries used by other components

  • components that make up the GNOME system, including gnome-shell

  • the core GNOME apps, such as Settings and Files

  • GNOME’s developer apps, including Builder

The process of adding and removing apps from the core set happens in the app organization project.