Release Policy

We’re following SemVer (as much as one can be following it when the major version is 0). At this point bumps of the minor (second) version number are considered major releases and always include new features or significant changes to existing features. Clojure API compatibility between major releases is not a (big) concern (although we try to break the API rarely and only for a good reason). nREPL API compatibility, however, is a big concern and we’re very careful to limit the breaking changes there (especially when it comes to middleware that are widely used).

The development cycle for the next major release starts immediately after the previous one has been shipped. Bugfix/point releases (if any) address only serious bugs and never contain new features.

Here are a few examples:

CIDER and cider-nrepl are released independently, but follow the same release policy overall. cider-nrepl is used by many other projects besides CIDER, therefore the need for it to have a release schedule that’s independent from CIDER’s.