esp-idf/SUPPORT_POLICY.md
2019-10-18 18:25:20 +11:00

2.7 KiB

The latest support policy for ESP-IDF can be found at https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/blob/master/SUPPORT_POLICY.md

Support Period Policy

Each ESP-IDF major and minor release (V4.0, V4.1, etc) is supported for 18 months after the initial stable release date.

Supported means that the ESP-IDF team will continue to apply bug fixes, security fixes, etc to the release branch on GitHub, and periodically make new bugfix releases as needed.

Users are encouraged to upgrade to a newer ESP-IDF release before the support period finishes and the release becomes End of Life (EOL). It is our policy to not continue fixing bugs in End of Life releases.

Pre-release versions (betas, previews, -rc and -dev versions, etc) are not covered by any support period. Sometimes a particular feature is marked as "Preview" in a release, which means it is also not covered by the support period.

The ESP-IDF Programming Guide has information about the different versions of ESP-IDF (major, minor, bugfix, etc).

Long Term Support releases

Some releases (starting with ESP-IDF V3.3) are designated Long Term Support (LTS). LTS releases are supported for 30 months (2.5 years) after the initial stable release date.

A new LTS release will be made at least every 18 months. This means there will always be a period of at least 12 months to upgrade from the previous LTS release to the following LTS release.

Example

ESP-IDF V3.3 was released in September 2019 and is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, meaning it will be supported for 30 months until February 2022.

  • The first V3.3 release was v3.3 in September 2019.
  • The ESP-IDF team continues to backport bug fixes, security fixes, etc to the release branch release/v3.3.
  • Periodically stable bugfix releases are created from the release branch. For example v3.3.1, v3.3.2, etc. Users are encouraged to always update to the latest bugfix release.
  • V3.3 bugfix releases continue until February 2022, when all V3.3.x releases become End of Life.

Existing Releases

ESP-IDF release V3.3 and all newer releases will follow this support period policy. The support period for each release will be announced when the release is made.

For releases made before the support period policy was announced, the following support periods apply:

  • ESP-IDF V3.1.x and V3.2.x will both be supported until October 2020.
  • ESP-IDF V3.0.9 (planned for October 2019) will be the last V3.0 bugfix release. ESP-IDF V3.0.x is End of Life from October 2019.
  • ESP-IDF versions before V3.0 are already End of Life.