69 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
69 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
% Release Channels
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The Rust project uses a concept called ‘release channels’ to manage releases.
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It’s important to understand this process to choose which version of Rust
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your project should use.
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# Overview
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There are three channels for Rust releases:
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* Nightly
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* Beta
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* Stable
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New nightly releases are created once a day. Every six weeks, the latest
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nightly release is promoted to ‘Beta’. At that point, it will only receive
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patches to fix serious errors. Six weeks later, the beta is promoted to
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‘Stable’, and becomes the next release of `1.x`.
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This process happens in parallel. So every six weeks, on the same day,
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nightly goes to beta, beta goes to stable. When `1.x` is released, at
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the same time, `1.(x + 1)-beta` is released, and the nightly becomes the
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first version of `1.(x + 2)-nightly`.
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# Choosing a version
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Generally speaking, unless you have a specific reason, you should be using the
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stable release channel. These releases are intended for a general audience.
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However, depending on your interest in Rust, you may choose to use nightly
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instead. The basic tradeoff is this: in the nightly channel, you can use
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unstable, new Rust features. However, unstable features are subject to change,
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and so any new nightly release may break your code. If you use the stable
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release, you cannot use experimental features, but the next release of Rust
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will not cause significant issues through breaking changes.
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# Helping the ecosystem through CI
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What about beta? We encourage all Rust users who use the stable release channel
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to also test against the beta channel in their continuous integration systems.
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This will help alert the team in case there’s an accidental regression.
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Additionally, testing against nightly can catch regressions even sooner, and so
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if you don’t mind a third build, we’d appreciate testing against all channels.
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As an example, many Rust programmers use [Travis](https://travis-ci.org/) to
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test their crates, which is free for open source projects. Travis [supports
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Rust directly][travis], and you can use a `.travis.yml` file like this to
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test on all channels:
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```yaml
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language: rust
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rust:
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- nightly
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- beta
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- stable
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matrix:
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allow_failures:
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- rust: nightly
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```
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[travis]: http://docs.travis-ci.com/user/languages/rust/
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With this configuration, Travis will test all three channels, but if something
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breaks on nightly, it won’t fail your build. A similar configuration is
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recommended for any CI system, check the documentation of the one you’re
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using for more details.
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