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How we version Arkitekt

We are talking about the Arkitekt-Server​

When we are discussing the versioing of Arkitekt, we are discussing the version of the Arkitekt-Server, and not the versioning of specific Arkitekt Apps. Apps follow their own versioning scheme, and are not directly affected by the versioning of the Arkitekt-Server, because of the way they are deployed. To read more about this check out the fakts section.

Versioning​

First and foremost: Arkitekt is a platform with multiple components, and we version each component separately. Your Arkitekt-Server might then be composed of multiple components with different versions, that live alongside each other, and your Arkitekt Server might contain multiple versions of the same component. This allows the administrator to let some users use beta versions of some components, while the majority will use the stable versions.

An example of how you might version an Arkitekt Deployment depending on your needs. Generally you will want most of your apps to connect to stable services. The only "conserved" platform api for the platform is the fakts api, which will not be able to differ from app to app that connects to your deployment. It is the defining service for each deployment.
tip

While you can even host completely developmental services in your production deployment, we strongly recommend against this. Most of the time you would want a developmental service to be hosted in a development Deployment of Arkitekt, and not in your production deployment.

How we version​

We version the Core Arkitekt Services around the concept of Channels. Channels provide an established way to release new features and changes to users, and allow us to group features and changes into different categories, so that users have a working version of Arkitekt at all times. Generally these channels can exist as "live" channels, or as "frozen" channels. Live channels are channels that are constantly updated, and frozen channels are channels that will never be updated, and will always contain the same version of the service. To ensure that you receive updates to a service, you need to be on a live channel, which is why we recommend to be on a live channel for most of your services.

Arkitekt has three live channels: Stable, Beta and Next. Each channel has a different purpose, and is used for different use cases.

  • Stable: The stable channel is the channel that is recommended for production environments, and is the channel that is used by default when installing Arkitekt. This channel will only contain services that are considered stable, and breaking changes to your database will be mitigated my migrations. Services in this channel are "guaranteed" to work together with your apps, and stable version of your community apps (and your own apps) should always be compatible with the services in this channel.

  • Beta: The beta channel is the channel that is recommended for development and testing environments, and contains services that are staging to be released to the stable channel. This channel will contain services that are considered stable, but might still contain breaking changes to a stable database. When appearing in the beta channel the services, services are supposed to get ready for the stable channel and only contain bugfixes.

  • Next: The next channel is considered the "bleeding edge" channel of Arkitekt, and contains services that are still in development. This channel is not recommended for production environments, and may contain services of Arkitekt that we are just testing out, and are experimenting on. Services in this channel are not guarenteed to work with your apps, and may contain breaking changes on every iteration of the service. Some of the services in this channel might never be released to the beta channel, and might be removed from the next channel at any time.

When we release a new version of Arkitekt, we release a new version of each service in each channel. You can remain on an older version of a service, by choosing a frozen "channel", such as the "paper" channel (which is the frozen channel for the original publication of Arkitekt). When we publish a new version to the stable channel, we will also publish a "frozen", channel that will contain the same version of the service as the stable channel, but will never be updated. This allows you to stay on a specific version of the platform. Hoewver we strongly recommend that you stay on the stable channel. (No worries we will keep a transcript of which version of the service you were on for provenance reasons).

I developed my own Service, how do I version it?​

If you developed your own service, you can version it however you want. We recommend that you follow the same versioning scheme as the Arkitekt Services, but you are free to version your services however you want. If you want to establish your service as a "core" Arkitekt service you will however adhere to the channel scheme described above (and your first iteration will be put into the next channel).

Just contact usand we will help you with the process of establishing your service as a core Arkitekt service.