The Open edX community can share knowledge and improvements more easily when most people use the same stable, consistent version of the Open edX codebase. To that end, edX is creating a series of named releases for Open edX, which are distinct from the weekly deployments to edx.org and have a longer release cycle (on the order of several months between each release). These named releases will be tested both by edX and by the Open edX community, and with each subsequent named release we will include instructions for how to upgrade from the previous named release.

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named-release/aspen

Note that "release candidates" are not final yet, which is why they do not have a release date in this table. We encourage the Open edX community to test release candidates for several days and report any issues, so that they can be fixed before the new release is declared. In git, release candidates are branches, while releases are tags.

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To set up a devstack or fullstack VM using a named release, simply set the OPENEDX_RELEASE environment variable to the release's git tag before running vagrant up. To install a named release without using Vagrant, simply check out the release's git tag in each git repository before running Open edX as you normally would. See the named releases documentation in the configuration repo for more information and specific instructions.

Updating a Named Release

Each named release after Aspen will include instructions and scripts for how to update an Open edX installation from the previous named release. These scripts will handle issues like database migrations, backwards-incompatible changes, new project settings, and so on. These scripts will be tested by edX and by the Open edX community, and they will make it easier for members of the Open edX community to keep their installations up to dateTo migrate from Aspen to Birch, we've provided a migration script to help you out. It's designed to be run on the server when the Open edX software is running. To download and run the migration script, do the following:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/edx/configuration/master/util/vagrant/migrate.sh -O
$ chmod a+x migrate.sh
$ ./migrate.sh

The script also accepts certain arguments to change how it works – run ./migrate.sh -h to see a help message.

Note that Birch depends on MySQL 5.6 and MongoDB 2.6.4, which Aspen uses MySQL 5.5 and MongoDB 2.4.7. It is highly recommended that you upgrade your databases yourself, before running the migration script. If you don't, the script will attempt to upgrade your databases for you, and you run the risk of corrupting all your data if something goes wrong.

Security Updates

If security vulnerabilities or other serious problems (such as data loss) are discovered in the most recent named release, edX will release a new version of that named release that includes the fix. We will not make patches of any named releases before the most recent one. We are still working on the details of how often to update a named release. We will publicly announce the security issue, and encourage the Open edX community to update their installations to close the vulnerability. If you have found a security vulnerability in the Open edX codebase, please report it by sending an email to security@edx.org. Please do not post the vulnerability to the public mailing lists.

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