Release Strategy

This document describes the release strategies for the RefArch ready-to-use components and the templates.

RefArch (Gateway, Tools, Integrations, ...)

• Branching Model:
  • Single main branch only.
• Versioning:
  • Semantic Versioning is used (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH).
• Development and Release:
  • Features are merged directly into the main branch.
  • Releases are made from the main branch as needed.
  • Major or breaking changes are accumulated over a period of approximately six months and then released together.

RefArch Templates

• Branching Model:
  • main: active development branch where new features are merged.
• Versioning Scheme:
  • Versions follow the format: <year>.<counter>.<patch>
    • <year>: year of the release (e.g., 2026)
    • <counter>: incremented twice a year (e.g., 0, 1)
    • <patch>: patch number for bug fixes
• Release Process:
  1. New features are merged into the main branch.
  2. Approximately every six months, a release is created from the main branch with the new version number.

WARNING

The main branch can contain features which are not part of any release yet. However, these should already be described in this documentation.

Helm Charts

The refarch-gateway Helm chart follows the major and minor version of the refarch-gateway Docker image. The patch version can differ.

An upgrade of the refarch-gateway chart dependency in the refarch-templates Helm chart is reflected with the same type of version increase (e.g. refarch-gateway minor bump -> refarch-templates minor bump).

For more information on deployment using Helm charts, see the Deployment chapter.