Versioning and releases

We aim to provide citizens and visitors of the city of Ghent a uniform experience throughout our many websites and applications. At the same time it is imperative that we continue evolving, and we expect the same from projects depending on this style guide.

Versioning

We use semantic versioning to help understand the potential impact of a new version.
major.minor.patch

• Major releases may contain breaking changes, it will almost always be necessary to refactor some of your templates and check for usage of deprecated components and/or classNames.
• Minor releases can contain new components, or non-breaking changes. These are changes where the HTML template remains the same, but the scss may have been updated.
  If your project does not override our scss, there will be no impact.
  If it does, you will have to update your scss accordingly.
• Patch releases are bug fix releases, developer assistance should not be required while updating.

For minor and major versions, please always check the changelog for required actions.

Release frequency

Patch and minor releases will be rolled out continuously. This should enable us to keep up to date with the style guide and expectations of the city. A major release would mean major changes or a change of style in general.

Deprecation practices

Components and classNames marked as deprecated will be announced in the changelog.
These will still be available for the next two major releases and removed in the third. This gives you 18 months to update your projects.

For instance: the component checkbox with filter has been marked deprecated in version 4.0.0 (October 2020) and will be permanently removed in version 7.0.0 (April 2022).