Portainer release cadence for CE and Portainer Business in 2021

Its fair to say that the historical release cadence for Portainer CE has been somewhat random, and this was predominately related to the fact that we had grand aspirations that were at times grander than the size of our development team. This meant we chose to have larger gaps between releases so as to fit in more features.

Now that our team is growing, we are able to lock in a more predictable cadence and will have a relatively simple and transparent approach to feature additions vs bug fixes. Moving forward, “dot” releases of Portainer CE will contain only bug fixes and “non-breaking” trivial new features.

Major releases will occur every two months, and will contain both new features and bug fixes, some of which may introduce breaking changes. Regardless, every month we will be releasing a new version of Portainer CE. Release will be targeted on or around the second to last day of each month.

For Portainer Business (PB), we need a slightly longer release cycle due to the increased depth of testing we have committed to our business users. There will be a major release once every 4 months, and a “dot” release midway between the major releases. The dot releases for BE will ONLY include bug fixes; there will be NO new features added in the mid-releases. The upgrade to a “dot” release is only recommended if you have a bug that has been fixed, or if we recommend you upgrade due to a security issue. Release will be targeted on or around the last day of the first week of the month of release.

You will note that the release numbering for Portainer Business differs from Portainer CE, and that is because whilst Business is derived off CE, it runs a different development cycle. Portainer PB 2.2 may contain some features from CE 2.3 or CE 2.3.1 as we determine applicability.

We hope this new release schedule will assist with your internal planning, and as always, I'm happy to take questions.

neil@portainer.io