TrueNAS Nightly Development DocumentationThis content follows experimental nightly development software. Pre-release software is intended for testing purposes only.
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Software Development Life Cycle
3 minute read.
The TrueNAS Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is the process of planning, creating, testing, deploying, and maintaining TrueNAS releases.
The TrueNAS SDLC applies to the latest two release branches. As new releases are created for TrueNAS, the oldest TrueNAS release branch is dropped out of the SDLC and labeled as End of Life (EoL). For example, TrueNAS/FreeNAS 11.3 and TrueNAS 12.0 were in active development under the SDLC in August 2020. In early 2021, TrueNAS Enterprise 12.0 and 13.0 branches were in active development under the SDLC. These versions of the software are in active development and maintenance. We encourage users to actively keep their software updated to an active development version to continue to receive security patches and other software improvements.
The Software Status page shows the latest recommendations for using the various TrueNAS software releases.
TrueNAS releases follow a general adoption guideline for their lifetime. Starting with the NIGHTLY builds, each stage of a major release incorporates more testing cycles and bug fixes that represent a maturation of the release. With each version release stage, users are encouraged to install, upgrade, or otherwise begin using the major version, depending on the specific TrueNAS deployment and use case:
Release Stage | Completed QA Cycles | Typical Use | Description |
---|---|---|---|
NIGHTLY | 0 | Developers | Incomplete |
ALPHA | 1 | Testers | Not much field testing |
BETA | 2 | Enthusiasts | Major Feature Complete, but expect some bugs |
RC | 4 | Home Users | Suitable for non-critical deployments |
RELEASE | 6 | General Use | Suitable for less complex deployments |
U1 | 7 | Business Use | Suitable for more complex deployments |
U2+ | 8 | Larger Systems | Suitable for higher uptime deployments |