Support Policies

In this document

Also, see Requirements and Compatibility in the reference documentation.

Disclaimers

  • Nothing in these policies is legally binding. We operate on an "economically reasonable effort" basis.
  • We reserve the right to change policies without notice.
  • We may choose to make exceptions to these policies.

Versioning and Backward Compatibility Policies

Versioning

PostSharp follows the versioning scheme YYYY.N.B[M], where:

  • YYYY represents the current or next year,
  • N signifies the version number within this year,
  • B stands for the build number within the minor version,
  • M denotes the release maturity level (see below),

We don't differentiate between a major and a minor version. We only distinguish versions (YYYY.N) and builds (B).

Maturity

We use four maturity levels:

  • -alpha releases are private builds made prior to public release;
  • -preview releases are intermediate public builds that are not yet feature-complete and may still be subject to breaking changes;
  • -rc releases meet all quality standards for stable releases, except that they have not been tested in the wild;
  • Stable (Generally Available/GA) releases meet all quality standards, and the feature freeze applies. The moment when a release is marked as stable is called the general availability date. At this moment, the releases appear in the stable channels on our website, the Visual Studio Marketplace, and the NuGet Gallery, and they start to be widely downloaded. Note that it typically takes 4 to 6 weeks after a new YYYY.N version is marked as stable before most bugs surface.

Side-by-Side Versions

A project can have references (direct and indirect) to several PostSharp/Metalama packages of different versions within the same major version. The version of the PostSharp/Metalama package must be higher than or equal to the version of any other package from the PostSharp or Metalama family. (Note that PostSharp and Metalama are entirely independent product lines and have different release cycles.)

Side-by-side compatibility is provided on an "economically reasonable effort" basis. We perform structural tests of backward compatibility (comparison of public APIs, shared internals, and serialization details), but not behavioral tests such as unit tests.

Our support team may ask customers to upgrade all their packages to the same patch release, as there may be no other economically reasonable solution to some issues.

Quality Standards

At PostSharp, we take the term release candidate seriously. This means that an RC should have the same quality as an RTM, with the only difference being that it has been less tested by customers.

Before we tag a new release as RC quality, the following criteria must be fulfilled for all features:

  1. Features are fully implemented.
  2. Features are reasonably tested, including error conditions.
  3. Features are documented, both with conceptual and procedural documentation.
  4. Features have been tested on physical devices.
  5. All public APIs have undergone extensive critical review.
  6. Code analysis warnings have been addressed for public APIs.
  7. Integration with new features and old features has been tested.
  8. All bugs with a higher priority than Later have been fixed.

Security Standards

We have implemented the following security practices:

  1. Our executables and libraries are signed with Authenticode.
  2. We scan all deliverables with a virus scanner before signature.
  3. All developer workstations and build agents are equipped with anti-malware software and strict security policies enforced by Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Support Lifecycle Policy

Our customers have three options to choose from when it comes to releases: Long Term Support (LTS), Current, or Preview releases. Here's what you need to know about each option:

  • LTS releases: These are supported for 5 years after the general availability date, or 1 year after a subsequent release has been promoted to LTS - whichever is shorter. Our LTS releases are designed to be used with the underlying LTS versions of the .NET and Visual Studio platforms, to ensure a complete and stable technology stack. However, there may be instances where certain features or platforms are no longer supported in a given release. These are referred to as "Exclusions" and may require an update to a subsequent release or might have been abandoned altogether.

  • Current releases: These are supported for two months after the general availability of the next Current or LTS release (i.e., V+1) or when the Release Candidate (RC) of the version following the next version (i.e., V+2) is released, whichever is earlier.

  • Preview releases: These include alpha releases and release candidates and are supported until the next Preview, Current, or LTS release of the same minor version is published.

    • To be eligible for technical support, customers using the LTS option must have the latest patch update installed within the same minor release.

    Version GA Release Date Support Level End of Support Exclusions
    Metalama 2024.0 December, 2023 Preview 2 months after some future Current or LTS version is released None
    Metalama 2023.4 November, 2023 Current 2 months after some future Current or LTS version is released None
    Metalama 2023.3 October, 2023 Current January 7, 2024 None
    PostSharp 2024.0 January, 2024 Preview None
    PostSharp 2023.0 January 12, 2023 Current 2 months after some future Current or LTS version is released None
    PostSharp 6.10 December 1, 2021 LTS December 2, 2026 or 1 year after some future version is promoted LTS None

    Supported Platforms and Frameworks

    In this section, we use the term platform to refer to Windows, .NET Framework, .NET Core or Visual Studio.

    This section covers only policies. For a list of supported platforms, please see the Requirements and Compatibility page in PostSharp or Metalama documentation.

    What we mean by supported platform

    By supported (or officially supported) platform version we mean that we have spent or will spend commercially-reasonable efforts to:

    • test our product with these versions before or shortly after they are released,
    • fix issues that stem from the use of these versions, and
    • provide support services.

    It frequently happens, in practice, that PostSharp or Metalama will work with a non-supported platform version. However, if some issue happens, we will first ask you to upgrade or downgrade to a supported platform version.

    Support of platform versions by their manufacturer

    Only platform versions that are currently supported by their manufacturer are supported by our products. If the manufacturer differentiates Mainstream Support for Extended Support, only platforms under Mainstream Support will be supported by PostSharp.

    Check the support policies of the platform you rely on. The support lifecycle is probably shorter than you would expect! Check the following documents:

    Preview Releases

    Pre-release platform versions are never officially supported, even when they get a production license from their publisher.

    Patch Releases

    Only the latest Patch Release of a supported platform version is officially supported.

    Operating systems must be updated with all Important Updates to qualify for support.

    Before providing support services to you (such as diagnosing or fixing a bug), we ask you to update PostSharp and all platforms to the latest Patch Release.

    Abandon of support for platforms

    When we release a new major or minor release, we remove support for platforms, frameworks, compilers and other tools that are no longer in mainstream support from Microsoft or their vendor. We may also remove support for a version of a platform if we consider that too many versions of the platform would be otherwise supported, taking usage statistics into account.

    Customers of these retired platforms may still use a supported version of PostSharp during some time but may not upgrade to a new major version.

    We reserve the right not to implement support for all new platforms or platform versions Microsoft or others may come with.

    Support Level for Commercial Customers

    Support Ticket

    We typically respond within four business hours to any message, whether it is an initial question or a request for clarification. Due to the product's complexity, we do not employ support engineers. Instead, you will be in direct contact with the software engineers who built the product.

    Please note that we generally do not debug your source code or offer support through screen sharing.

    Bug Fixing

    At PostSharp, we operate on a three-week iteration pace. Typically, we release one build per maintained branch during each iteration. This generally includes three branches: the current stable branch, the previous major version, and the in-development branch if it is ready for preview.

    We categorize bug fixes into five priorities:

    Priority Description
    ASAP Fix and publish the fix as soon as possible (cycle time: typically 1 or 2 business days).
    Current Iteration Fix during the current iteration and include in the planned build (cycle time: up to 3 weeks).
    Next Iteration Fix during the next iteration and include in the planned build (cycle time: up to 6 weeks).
    Later Fix during a special bug-fixing iteration or in a later release.
    Maybe No guarantee that the bug will ever be fixed.

    We assign priorities to bug fixes based on the following rules:

    Severity Description Priority
    Low The product does not function as designed and a workaround exists or the defect is in a release that is older than 18 months. Later
    Normal The product does not function and there is no workaround and the use case has never worked before. Next Iteration
    High The product does not function and there is no workaround and the use case worked in a previous build. Current Iteration
    Critical Several developers cannot perform their normal work due to our product and there is no workaround, not even rolling back to a previous build. ASAP

    Note that commercial customers can escalate the priority of issues that have been reported by non-commercial users.