Update: Removing old maintenance branches end of August 2026

[solidpixel]

We currently still have maintenance branches for all major release series live, with the 5.x series served off main, even though most of the older releases are now obsolete.

As part of cleaning up the repo, we are proposing to delete the 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x maintenance branches at the end of August. The current state of the branches has been stored in a final tag for each branch:

• 1.x branch saved as 1.7.1 tag.
• 2.x branch saved as 2.5.1 tag.
• 3.x branch saved as 3.5.1 tag.

The 4.x branch will remain, and will continue to get security updates, although it is no longer under active development.

Older release tags will of course remain live, but we would encourage you to move to a more recent release due to the bug fix and security updates it gets, as well as the performance benefits it can bring.

[Vladik01-11]

But why?

[solidpixel]

Mostly because having what looks like a maintenance branch gives it some sense of "it's OK to use", and the older out-of-maintenance releases have bugs and potentially security issues that are not getting fixed. There is really no good reason to use them, and if there is a reason an in-maintenance version can't be used instead, I'd like to know why.

If anyone really wants to use an old release, the old release tags exist.

[Vladik01-11]

I understand you, then there really is no point in keeping them.