4 Note: details of the release process for the Engine are documented in the
5 [RELEASE-CHECKLIST](https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/project/RELEASE-CHECKLIST.md).
9 The docker/docker repository should normally have only three living branches at all time, including
10 the regular `master` branch:
14 The `docs` branch supports documentation updates between product releases. This branch allow us to
15 decouple documentation releases from product releases.
19 The `release` branch contains the last _released_ version of the code for the project.
21 The `release` branch is only updated at each public release of the project. The mechanism for this
22 is that the release is materialized by a pull request against the `release` branch which lives for
23 the duration of the code freeze period. When this pull request is merged, the `release` branch gets
24 updated, and its new state is tagged accordingly.
28 Any public release of a compiled binary, with the logical exception of nightly builds, should have
29 a corresponding tag in the repository.
31 The general format of a tag is `vX.Y.Z[-suffix[N]]`:
33 - All of `X`, `Y`, `Z` must be specified (example: `v1.0.0`)
34 - First release candidate for version `1.8.0` should be tagged `v1.8.0-rc1`
35 - Second alpha release of a product should be tagged `v1.0.0-alpha1`