Product lifecycle

Proactive, SoftwareXcel, Support Line

Introduction of semantic versioning to Open Enterprise SDK for Go

Open Enterprise SDK for Go supports the continuous delivery (CD) support lifecycle policy. IBM software products announced with CD support or 2+1 support lifecycle policy, include a minimum of 2 years of standard product technical support (defect and non-defect) from the general availability date of the product version. Upon End of Support (EOS), IBM may offer a 1-year support extension, for an additional fee, as long as your Software Subscription and Support (also referred to as Software Maintenance) is in effect. The Open Enterprise SDK for Go 1.20 offering is based on an open source implementation from the Go community and as of this release will use semantic versioning in association with its CD lifecycle policy.

With semantic versioning, the release versioning of Open Enterprise SDK for Go 1.20 and onwards contains the three components

MAJOR, MINOR, and PATCH:

• MAJOR is incremented for a major function update and additional API changes may be included. This indicates a new 2+1 support lifecycle.
• MINOR is incremented for CD update packages and do not restart 2+1 support lifecycle. CD updates include new releases from the Go open source community, which are currently delivered every 6 months with only the current release and the previous release being in support for fixes at any time. Currently IBM delivers updates at the MINOR digit about every 6 months to keep current with the releases from the Go open source community. Starting with IBM Open Enterprise SDK for Go 1.20, subsequent MINOR digit updates are considered CD updates. As such there are no withdrawal from service announcements made on these MINOR releases. Clients should upgrade to the latest MINOR release.
• PATCH is incremented when only fixes are included and also does not restart the 2+1 support lifecycle.

Semantic versioning aligns with the current 6-month release cadence of the Go open source community where only the n (current release) and n-1 (previous release) are supported for fixes. Semantic versioning enables IBM to deliver a continuing stream of releases from the Go open source community so that you can maintain a high level of currency with the releases from the Go open source community by updating to the MINOR and PATCH releases on a more immediate basis. Keeping current to the Go open source community releases allows you to obtain the latest in bug fixes and security updates while also obtaining the latest in Go functionality.