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 Open edX releases, 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 releases will be tested both by edX and by the Open edX community, and with each subsequent release we will include instructions for how to upgrade from the previous Open edX release.
Current Open edX Releases
Note that the latest release (Dogwood) is the only supported release. We currently do not have the ability to support more than one release at a time.
For documentation on the latest release, please visit http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/open-edx-release-notes/en/latest/
| Release Name | Release Date | Git Tag | Vagrant Box Torrents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dogwood.1 | 2016-03-09 | named-release/dogwood.1 |
|
| Dogwood | 2016-02-11 | named-release/dogwood | |
Cypress | 2015-08-13 | named-release/cypress | |
Birch.2 | 2015-08-05 | named-release/birch.2 | |
| Birch.1 (unsupported) | 2015-07-27 | named-release/birch.1 | |
| Birch (unsupported) | 2015-02-24 | named-release/birch | |
| Aspen (unsupported) | 2014-10-28 | 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.
Installing an Open edX Release
The Open edX docs include Dogwood install instructions, and details of how to upgrade from Cypress to Dogwood.
Security Updates
If security vulnerabilities or other serious problems (such as data loss) are discovered in the most recent Open edX release, edX will release a new version of that release that includes the fix. We will not make patches of any releases before the most recent one. We are still working on the details of how often to update Open edX releases. 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.
Feedback
If you find a problem in the release candidate, please report them on the mailing list (openedx-ops for operations problem, edx-code for other problems), or even better, create issues in JIRA. We are very interested to hear from the community about what you value about Open edX releases. Please let us know what you would like to see in future releases. Discussion on the mailing list is always welcome, of course!