A maintenance release (also minor release or Maintenance Pack or MP) is a release of a product that does not add new features or content.
For instance, in
computer software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
, maintenance
releases are typically intended to solve minor problems, typically "
bugs" or
security
Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or ...
issues.
Example of minor version numbering
The somewhat unusual version number "3.0.5a" was used for a minor release of
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...
because of a lack of version numbers. Work on KDE 3.1 had already started and, up to that day, the release coordinator used version numbers such as 3.0.5, 3.0.6 internally in the main
CVS repository to mark snapshots of the upcoming 3.1. Then after 3.0.3, a number of important and unexpected bug fixes (starting from 3.0.4) suddenly became necessary, leading to a conflict, because 3.0.5 was at this time already in use. More recent KDE release cycles have tagged pre-release snapshots with large revision numbers, such as 3.1.95, to avoid such conflicts.
See also
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Patch (computing)
A patch is data that is intended to be used to modify an existing software resource such as a computer program, program or a computer file, file, often to fix software bug, bugs and security vulnerability, security vulnerabilities. A patch may b ...
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Software versioning
Software versioning is the process of assigning either unique ''version names'' or unique ''version numbers'' to unique states of computer software. Within a given version number category (e.g., major or minor), these numbers are generally assig ...
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Software release life cycle
The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...
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Point release
References
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Software release