About upgrades to new releases

Learn about how features and bug fixes are added to GitHub Enterprise Server through new releases.

In this article

GitHub Enterprise Server is constantly improving, with new functionality and bug fixes introduced through feature and patch releases.

Feature releases

Feature releases include new functionality and feature upgrades and typically occur quarterly.

All feature releases begin with at least one release candidate.

Release candidates

Release candidates are proposed feature releases, with a complete feature set. There may be problems that can only be found by customers actually using the release.

For performance, stability, and security reasons:

  • Do not install a release candidate in a production environment. Release candidate builds are intended solely for test and staging environments.
  • Do not upgrade to a release candidate from a supported, earlier version. Instead, install a release candidate in a new, test environment.
  • Do not upgrade from the release candidate to later versions, including generally available releases. Instead, destroy the release candidate environment.

As you test a release candidate, please provide feedback by contacting support. See "GitHub Support documentation."

Each new release candidate adds bug fixes for issues found in prior versions. When the release is ready for widespread adoption, GitHub publishes a stable feature release.

Patch releases

Between feature releases, you can benefit from patch releases, which:

  • Consist of hot patches and bug fixes
  • Happen more frequently than feature releases
  • Are generally available when first released, with no release candidates
  • Typically require less than five minutes of downtime

Upgrading GitHub Enterprise Server

There are two ways to upgrade GitHub Enterprise Server:

Further reading