This page documents the ASF policy on software releases. This document is for ASF release managers and PMC members. Information for end-users is also available.
This document summarizes the release process.
Generically, a release is anything that is published beyond the group that owns it. For an Apache project, that means any publication outside the development community, defined as individuals actively participating in development or following the dev list.
More narrowly, an official Apache release is one which has been endorsed as an "act of the Foundation" by a PMC.
Each PMC MUST obey the ASF requirements on approving any release.
See the ASF voting process page for general information about voting.
For a release vote to pass, a minimum of three positive binding votes and more positive binding votes than negative binding votes MUST be cast. Releases may not be vetoed. Votes cast by PMC members are binding, however, non-binding votes are greatly encouraged and a sign of a healthy project. See expressing votes for details on what constitutes positive and negative votes.
Before casting +1 binding votes, individuals are REQUIRED to download all signed source code packages onto their own hardware, verify that they meet all requirements of ASF policy on releases as described below, validate all cryptographic signatures, compile as provided, and test the result on their own platform.
Release votes SHOULD remain open for at least 72 hours.
Projects SHALL publish official releases and SHALL NOT publish unreleased materials outside the development community.
During the process of developing software and preparing a release, various packages are made available to the development community for testing purposes. Projects MUST direct outsiders towards official releases rather than raw source repositories, nightly builds, snapshots, release candidates, or any other similar packages. Projects SHOULD make available developer resources to support individuals actively participating in development or following the dev list and thus aware of the conditions placed on unreleased materials.
Every ASF release MUST contain one or more source packages, which MUST be sufficient for a user to build and test the release provided they have access to the appropriate platform and tools. A source release SHOULD not contain compiled code.
All supplied packages MUST be cryptographically signed with a detached signature. It MUST be signed by either the Release Manager or the automated release infrastructure, where the underlying implementation MUST follow the principles outlined by the Apache Security Team. All supplied packages MUST use a detached signature. Those who vote +1 for release MAY offer their own cryptographic signature to be concatenated with the detached signature file (at the Release Manager's discretion) prior to release.
The Apache Software Foundation produces open source software. All releases are in the form of the source materials needed to make changes to the software being released.
As a convenience to users that might not have the appropriate tools to build a compiled version of the source, binary/bytecode packages MAY be distributed alongside official Apache releases. In all such cases, the binary/bytecode package MUST have the same version number as the source release and MUST only add binary/bytecode files that are the result of compiling that version of the source code release and its dependencies.
Every ASF release MUST comply with ASF licensing policy. This requirement is of utmost importance and an audit SHOULD be performed before any full release is created. In particular, every artifact distributed MUST contain only appropriately licensed code per Apache Licensing Policy.
Each package MUST provide a LICENSE file and a NOTICE file which account
for the package's exact content. LICENSE and NOTICE MUST NOT provide
unnecessary information about materials which are not bundled in the package,
such as separately downloaded dependencies.
For source packages, LICENSE and NOTICE MUST be located at the root of the
distribution. For additional packages, they MUST be located in the
distribution format's customary location for licensing materials, such as the
META-INF directory of Java "jar" files.
LICENSE file¶The LICENSE file MUST contain the full text of the Apache License
2.0.
When a package bundles code under several licenses, the LICENSE file
MUST contain details of all these licenses. For each component which is not
Apache licensed, details of the component MUST be appended to the LICENSE
file. The component license itself MUST either be appended or else stored
elsewhere in the package with a pointer to it from the LICENSE file, e.g.
if the license is long.
NOTICE file¶The NOTICE file must conform to the requirements of Apache licensing
policy.
See also section 4(d) of the Apache License 2.0.
Source files consisting of works submitted directly to the ASF by the copyright owner or owner's agent must contain the appropriate ASF license header.
Once a release is approved, all artifacts MUST be uploaded to the project's
subdirectory within the canonical Apache distribution channel,
downloads.apache.org.
The PMC is responsible for the project distribution directory and MUST be able to account for its entire contents. All release artifacts within the directory MUST be signed by a committer, preferably a PMC member.
After uploading to the canonical distribution channel, the project (or anyone else) MAY redistribute the artifacts in accordance with their licensing through other channels.
All official releases MUST be archived permanently on archive.apache.org.
(Uploading to the canonical distribution channel satisfies this requirement because archival happens automatically as a side effect.)
Projects MUST notify the Board of Directors of any deviations from recommended or required policy directives.
Changes to Release Policy must be approved by Legal Affairs.
Formalize additional official policies and reference them from this policy:
In the traditional open source development methodology practiced at volunteer liability-limiting organizations like Apache, it is necessary to draw clear distinctions between public resources that represent works "in-progress" and works suitable for consumption by the public at large. The purpose of a clear line is to inform our legal strategy of providing protection for formal participants involved in producing releases, as defined in the next section. In-progress assets are viewed as controlled distributions designed for self-identifying participants in project development, who are primarily following the project's development lists. Uncontrolled distributions, aka releases, are what this policy document is designed to cover.
Were we to avoid drawing this distinction, and instead encouraged users to interact directly with source control or nightly builds, it would be very difficult for the organization to offer legal protection to Apache committers and PMC members who have only exercised their own judgement in making software modifications without the benefit of an authorized business decision approving of the distribution of those artifacts as-is to the public at large. The bulk of Apache's "bureaucracy" and project governance structure are to facilitate the goals of this policy, so this document is well worth a careful study.
Deviations from this policy may have an adverse effect on the legal shield's effectiveness, or the insurance premiums Apache pays to protect officers and directors, so are strongly discouraged without prior, explicit board approval. Do note however that organizationally we prefer robust, reviewable decision-making over efficient decision-making, so if you are thinking of proposing an alternative process for the board to consider, be sure your targets reflect this.
Releases are, by definition, anything that is published beyond the group that owns it. In our case, that means any publication outside the group of people on the product dev list. If the general public is being instructed to download a package, then that package has been released. Each PMC must obey the ASF requirements on approving any release. How you label the package is a secondary issue, described below.
During the process of developing software and preparing a release, various packages are made available to the developer community for testing purposes. Do not include any links on the project website that might encourage non-developers to download and use nightly builds, snapshots, release candidates, or any other similar package. The only people who are supposed to know about such packages are the people following the dev list (or searching its archives) and thus aware of the conditions placed on the package. If you find that the general public are downloading such test packages, then remove them.
Under no circumstances are unapproved builds a substitute for releases. If this policy seems inconvenient, then release more often. Proper release management is a key aspect of Apache software development.
The Apache Software Foundation produces open source software. All releases are in the form of the source materials needed to make changes to the software being released. In some cases, binary/bytecode packages are also produced as a convenience to users that might not have the appropriate tools to build a compiled version of the source. In all such cases, the binary/bytecode package must have the same version number as the source release and may only add binary/bytecode files that are the result of compiling that version of the source code release.
Test Packages are not Apache releases. All releases require due process and official approval. Test packages are for testing ongoing development and should only be discussed on the project development lists.
Nightly Builds are simply built from the Subversion/Git trunk/branch, usually once a day. These packages are intended for regular testing of the build process and to give automated testers a common build for regression testing. They are not intended for use by the general public.
Release Candidates are packages that have been proposed for approval as a release but have not yet been approved by the project. These packages are intended for developers (and users who follow the development discussions) to test and report back to the project regarding their opinions on the package quality compared to prior releases. Many release candidates are possible prior to a release approval. Users that are not interested in development testing should wait until a release is formally approved.
Releases are packages that have been approved for general public release, with varying degrees of caveat regarding their perceived quality or potential for change. Releases that are intended for everyday usage by non-developers are usually referred to as "stable" or "general availability (GA)" releases. Releases that are believed to be usable by testers and developers outside the project, but perhaps not yet stable in terms of features or functionality, are usually referred to as "beta" or "unstable". Releases that only represent a project milestone and are intended only for bleeding-edge developers working outside the project are called "alpha".
A release isn't 'released' until the contents are in the project's
distribution directory, which is a subdirectory of downloads.apache.org.
In addition to the distribution directory, project that use Maven or
a related build tool sometimes place their
releases on repository.apache.org beside some convenience binaries.
The distribution directory is required,
while the repository system is an optional convenience.
Every ASF release must contain a source package, which must be sufficient for a user to build and test the release provided they have access to the appropriate platform and tools. The source package must be cryptographically signed by the Release Manager with a detached signature; and that package together with its signature must be tested prior to voting +1 for release. Folks who vote +1 for release may offer their own cryptographic signature to be concatenated with the detached signature file (at the Release Manager's discretion) prior to release.
Note that the PMC is responsible for all artifacts in their distribution
directory, which is a subdirectory of downloads.apache.org ; and all
artifacts placed in their directory must be signed by a committer,
preferably by a PMC member. It is also necessary for the PMC to ensure that
the source package is sufficient to build any binary artifacts associated
with the release.
Every ASF release must comply with ASF licensing policy. This requirement is of utmost importance and an audit should be performed before any full release is created. In particular, every artifact distributed must contain only appropriately licensed code. More information can be found in the foundation website and in the release licensing FAQ.
Release votes happen as described above in the release approval section.
Before voting +1 PMC members are required to download the signed source code package, compile it as provided, and test the resulting executable on their own platform, along with also verifying that the package meets the requirements of the ASF policy on releases.
Please ensure that you wait at least one hour after uploading a new release before updating the project download page and sending the announcement email(s).
It is important to inform people about the availability of new releases. Announcements must contain a link to the relevant download page for the source. At the very least, emails should be sent out announcing this to all appropriate mailing lists. Many top level projects have announcement lists for this purpose. There is also an ASF-wide announcement list which is suitable.
Please note that you can not post the ASF-wide announcement list without using an "apache.org" mail address. Also, please make sure that you have put a 3-5 lines blurb for the project (because most of the subscribers to announce.AT.apache.DOT.org list may not know what XX-Project is).
It is recommended that an SHA-1 OpenPGP compatible signature is added to the announcement mail. Please ensure that your public key has been already uploaded to famous pgp sites (e.g. http://pgp.mit.edu/). This key should either be the one used to sign the release or one that is cross-signed by that key.
See the Incubator release management guide (draft). Alternatively, see the "How to release" developer documentation of any established Apache project. (The author is familiar with this one, from this project.)
Strictly speaking, releases must be verified on hardware owned and controlled by the committer. That means hardware the committer has physical possession and control of and exclusively full administrative/superuser access to. That's because only such hardware is qualified to hold a PGP private key, and the release should be verified on the machine the private key lives on or on a machine as trusted as that.
Practically speaking, when a release consists of anything beyond an archive (e.g., tarball or zip file) of a source control tag, the only practical way to validate that archive is to build it locally; manually inspecting generated files (especially binary files) is not feasible. So, basically, "Yes".
Note: This answer refers to the process used to produce a release artifact from a source control tag. It does not refer to testing that artifact for technical quality.
Test packages are for use by consenting developers and interested community
members only, so they should not be hosted or linked on pages intended for end
users, or released using a closer.lua script.
Projects should use the
/dev tree of the dist repository
or the staging features of repository.apache.org
to host release candidates posted for developer testing/voting (prior to being,
potentially, formally blessed as a GA release).
Nightly Builds that are not release candidates can be hosted at ci.apache.org projects area, just file an INFRA ticket.
Current releases must be served from the ASF content distribution system by placing them under
https://downloads.apache.org/ (see How do I upload a release?).
Project download pages must use a closer.lua script and not link directly to the main Apache Web site; see instructions for creating download pages for further details.
The website documentation for the software must contain a link to the download page for the source.
Project websites (http:// {project}.apache.org),
VMs (http:// {project}.zones.apache.org and http://{project}-vm.apache.org),
and source control repositories (svn.apache.org and Git repositories)
may not be used to distribute releases --- that is, releases should not be
downloaded from them.
All releases are archived on http://archive.apache.org/dist/.
An automated process adds releases to the archive about a day after
they first appear on to https://downloads.apache.org/.
Once a release is placed under https://downloads.apache.org/ it will automatically be copied over
to http://archive.apache.org/dist/ and held there permanently, even after it is deleted from https://downloads.apache.org/.
If you have (legacy?) releases that never got archived, ask infra to copy them to http://archive.apache.org/dist/.
downloads.apache.org should contain the latest release in each branch
that is currently under development. When development ceases on a version
branch, releases of that branch should be removed from the project's download
directory.
(If the project uses svnpubsub, delete the artifacts from
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/<TLP name>/.)
For example, if Apache Foo 1.2.x is a newer release in the same line as Foo 1.1.a, then 1.1.a should be removed when 1.2.x is released. Note that all releases are automatically archived, see How Is An Old Release Moved To The Archives
If Apache Foo 1.2 is a new branch, and development continues on 1.1 in
parallel, then it is acceptable to serve both 1.1.a and 1.2.x from /dist.
By committing your release tarballs to the appropriate subdirectory (i.e. TLP name) of the
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/
repository. Our synchronization process will push the files to the master
download site within 15 minutes.
Wait about an hour after uploading a new release before updating the project download page.
The repository directory
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/<TLP name>/
is for official releases only, i.e. archives (+ sigs, hashes) that have been approved
by the PMC. For this reason, by default only PMC members can update the dist/release directory tree.
If the Release Manager is not a member of the PMC, they will need to ask a PMC member to do the actual release publication.
The PMC can also vote to let non-PMC-members update the dist/release area. To get this set up, please open a JIRA ticket at the INFRA JIRA referencing the PMC vote.
There is also a development area under
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/<TLP name>/
which can be used for development releases.
For example snapshots and release candidates can be stored here. One important item to note
is that this directory does not get published to the content distribution system via svnpubsub. It is intended to
act as a staging location in preparation for the release to become official.
All committers on a project can write to the dist/dev area for the project.
If used for release candidates, then following a successful vote, the appropriate files can be moved from the dev/ tree to the release/ tree in order to publish them.
Commit mails to the dist/ repository go to your normal project mailing lists.
Most projects can just distribute a release as described in the previous two questions. However, releases that are likely to strain content distribution resources must be coordinated with infrastructure.
Note Infra recommends keeping the size of your release artifacts below 100MB. The ASF will not host release artifacts larger than 1GB.
Specific exemptions from other dist policies (such as what may or must or must not be distributed via the content distribution system) also need to be coordinated with Infrastructure.
| Type | Location |
|---|---|
| Nightly Builds | ci.apache.org/projects |
| Current Releases | downloads.apache.org |
| Older Releases | archive.apache.org/dist |
downloads.apache.org is automatically archived. Therefore, a copy of an
official release will already exist in the archives. To move a release to
the archives, just delete the copy in your project's dist directory. Remember to
update any links from the download page.
See the guide to Publishing Maven Releases.
Please read Applying the Apache License, Version 2.0 and check the Apache Licenses and Apache Legal pages for current information.
Every source file must contain the appropriate ASF License text.
In short, only one copy of the license is needed per distribution. This full license file should be placed at the root of the distribution in a file named LICENSE. For software developed at the ASF, each source file need only contain the boilerplate notice.
The new license allows for a NOTICE file that contains such attribution notices (including the Apache attribution notice). Read this.
Any attribution notices contained within existing source files should be moved into the file. The NOTICE file must included within the distributed next to the LICENSE file.
Ensure that the standard ASF attribution notice is contained in any new NOTICE file created.
Read this.
Only mandatory information required by the product's software licenses. Not suitable for normal documentation.
Yes! The NOTICE file must contain the standard ASF attribution, given below:
This product includes software developed at
The Apache Software Foundation (/).
N.B. Unfortunately versions of this document prior to 2013-01-30 (r1440650) were incorrect, as they used the phrase: "developed by" instead of "developed at". The official wording was established in section 6C of the board minutes for May 24 2006
When an artifact contains code under several licenses, the LICENSE file should contain details of all these licenses. For each component which is not Apache licensed, details of the component should be appended to the LICENSE file. The component license itself may also be appended, or it may be stored elsewhere in the artifact with a pointer to it from the LICENSE file, e.g. if the license is long.
Here is an example showing appended licenses.
ASF releases typically contain additional material together with the source package. This material may include documentation concerning the release but must contain LICENSE and NOTICE files. As mentioned above, these artifacts must be signed by a committer with a detached signature if they are to be placed in the project's distribution directory.
Again, these artifacts may be distributed only if they contain LICENSE and NOTICE files. For example, the Java artifact format is based on a compressed directory structure and those projects wishing to distribute jars must place LICENSE and NOTICE files in the META-INF directory within the jar.
Nothing in this section is meant to supersede the requirements defined here and here that all releases be primarily based on a signed source package.
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