Smack Release Life Cycle

• 1 year alpha phase (the "merge window")
• branch codebase
• 3 month beta phase (some changes possible)
• merge beta branch into master (if there where changes)
• 3 month release candidate phase (no more changes besides bugfixes)
• release
• 1.5 year support phase

Quartal	Alpha	Beta	RC	Stable	Old Stable
2016-Q4	-	4.2	-	4.1	-
2017-Q1	4.3	-	4.2	4.1	-
2017-Q2	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2017-Q3	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2017-Q4	4.3	-	-	4.2	-
2018-Q1	4.4	4.3	-	4.2	-
2018-Q2	4.4.	-	4.3	4.2	-
2018-Q3	4.4.	-	-	4.3	4.2
2018-Q4	4.4	-	-	4.3	4.2
2019-Q1	4.5	4.4	-	4.3	-
2019-Q2	4.5	-	4.4	4.3	-
2019-Q3	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2019-Q4	4.5	-	-	4.4	4.3
2020-Q1	4.6	4.5	-	4.4	-
2020-Q2	4.6	-	4.5	4.4	-
2020-Q3	4.6	-	-	4.5	4.4