1OpenZFS uses the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning scheme described here: 2 3 * MAJOR - Incremented at the discretion of the OpenZFS developers to indicate 4 a particularly noteworthy feature or change. An increase in MAJOR number 5 does not indicate any incompatible on-disk format change. The ability 6 to import a ZFS pool is controlled by the feature flags enabled on the 7 pool and the feature flags supported by the installed OpenZFS version. 8 Increasing the MAJOR version is expected to be an infrequent occurrence. 9 10 * MINOR - Incremented to indicate new functionality such as a new feature 11 flag, pool/dataset property, zfs/zpool sub-command, new user/kernel 12 interface, etc. MINOR releases may introduce incompatible changes to the 13 user space library APIs (libzfs.so). Existing user/kernel interfaces are 14 considered to be stable to maximize compatibility between OpenZFS releases. 15 Additions to the user/kernel interface are backwards compatible. 16 17 * PATCH - Incremented when applying documentation updates, important bug 18 fixes, minor performance improvements, and kernel compatibility patches. 19 The user space library APIs and user/kernel interface are considered to 20 be stable. PATCH releases for a MAJOR.MINOR are published as needed. 21 22Two release branches are maintained for OpenZFS, they are: 23 24 * OpenZFS LTS - A designated MAJOR.MINOR release with periodic PATCH 25 releases that incorporate important changes backported from newer OpenZFS 26 releases. This branch is intended for use in environments using an 27 LTS, enterprise, or similarly managed kernel (RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, Debian). 28 Minor changes to support these distribution kernels will be applied as 29 needed. New kernel versions released after the OpenZFS LTS release are 30 not supported. LTS releases will receive patches for at least 2 years. 31 The current LTS release is OpenZFS 2.1. 32 33 * OpenZFS current - Tracks the newest MAJOR.MINOR release. This branch 34 includes support for the latest OpenZFS features and recently releases 35 kernels. When a new MINOR release is tagged the previous MINOR release 36 will no longer be maintained (unless it is an LTS release). New MINOR 37 releases are planned to occur roughly annually. 38