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Release Stages

Cypress follows Semantic Versioning (see summary here) so that it is clear how you may be affected when upgrading to a newer version of Cypress. If there is a minor version increment, 11.0.0 → 11.1.0 for example, you should not experience disruption in your usage of Cypress. If there is a major version increment, 11.1.0 → 12.0.0 for example, you may need to make changes to continue using Cypress. For most scenarios this is a valid way to consider how disruptive upgrading to the next version of Cypress may be. In some cases, however, a feature of Cypress may be in a stage of development in which it does not adhere to these rules.

In order to help our users be aware of when this might be the case, we have consolidated definitions of the different release stages: General Availability, Beta, Alpha, and Experimental. We also describe our approach to making and communicating changes in each stage.

General Availability (GA)​

Features that have reached General Availability are features that we have deemed to be feature complete and free of issues in the majority of use cases.

Strategies for releasing and communicating changes to GA features

  • Modifications
    • Modifications can be introduced during any release cycle and increment semver
  • Breaking Changes
    • Breaking changes will only be introduced during major releases in which semver is bumped by a major version
    • In some cases early access to these changes are possible through public packages
  • Removals
    • Removals will only be introduced during major releases in which semver is bumped by a major version
    • In the majority of cases, removals will be proceeded by a period in which the feature is ‘deprecated’
    • Migration steps will be provided to minimize pain points in these situations

Beta​

Beta features may not be feature complete, but they should be close enough where major changes are not expected. Beta features consist of features that we are looking to gather user feedback on by providing them as default functionality before an official release.

Strategies for releasing and communicating changes to Beta features

  • Modifications
    • Modifications can be introduced during any release cycle.
    • Modifications will be documented, with recommended code changes highlighted if appropriate.
  • Breaking Changes
    • Breaking changes can be introduced during any release cycle and do not bump semver by a major version
    • Breaking changes require in-app messaging to help users unblock themselves as needed
    • The introduction and impact of breaking changes should be carefully considered at this stage as the cost to users is higher than with an alpha feature.
  • Removals
    • Removal of any new functionality related to the feature can happen during any release cycle and will increment semver. These do not need to coincide with a major release that is bumping semver by a major version.
    • Removals at this stage will be rare and a migration strategy along with reasoning for the removal will be documented.

Alpha​

Alpha features consist of features that we are looking to gather user feedback on by providing them as default functionality before an official release. Alpha features may not be feature complete and changes are possible during this stage.

Strategies for releasing and communicating changes to Alpha features

  • Modifications
    • Modifications can be introduced during any release cycle and may or may not increment semver.
    • Modifications will be documented, with recommended code changes highlighted if appropriate.
  • Breaking Changes
    • Breaking changes can be introduced during any release cycle and do not bump semver by a major version
  • Removals
    • Removal of any new functionality related to the feature can happen during any release cycle and does not bump semver by a major version.

Experimental​

Experimental features consist of features that we are looking to gather user feedback on before we commit fully to further development of the feature. These type of features require you to opt-in to via a configuration value prefixed with experimental. These types of features may be unstable and contain issues. You should expect to see frequent changes and improvements during the feature’s experimental lifetime. The current experimental features can be found here.

Strategies for releasing and communicating changes to experimental features

  • Modifications
    • Modifications can be introduced during any release cycle and may or may not increment semver.
  • Breaking Changes
    • Breaking changes can be introduced during any release cycle and do not bump semver by a major version.
  • Removals
    • Removal of any new functionality related to the feature or the feature in its entirety can happen during any release cycle and will not be accompanied by a major semver version change.

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