V2.5.6 released after v2.6.0?

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around the release of Discourse version 2.5.6 after 2.6.0. core expresses confusion about the release order, wondering how this happened and how to determine the latest stable release. Falco clarifies that the latest stable release is marked in the #releases category and the Discourse blog, with the stable branch on GitHub being the source of truth.

Falco explains that the v2.5.x line was the last to support Internet Explorer 11, and since then, Discourse has moved to Ruby 2.7, which is incompatible with Discourse 2.5. As a result, Discourse 2.5.6 is a backport of Ruby 2.7 compatibility to the 2.5.5 version.

I am really confused about the releases of discourse. Last time I was upgrading my forum, I was deploying v.2.5.6 when v.2.6.0 was already out. This was due to me looking for the releases tab of github:

Questions:

  • How is this possible?
  • How does one know what’s the latest stable release?

The latest stable should be 2.6.0, but I’m not sure what happened there – might be a good reason for it though! cc @falco

The latest stable release is marked in our #releases category and in our updates - Discourse.

The source of truth is the stable branch in our repository at GitHub - discourse/discourse at stable · GitHub

The v2.5.x line was the last one with Internet Explorer 11 support.

Since then we moved to Ruby 2.7 in production, but Discourse 2.5 was not compatible with Ruby 2.7. Discourse 2.5.6 is just 2.5.5 with backported Ruby 2.7 compatibility, as your can check for yourself in the commit logs.