How to pick the right Nextcloud releases channel?

Originally published at: How to pick the right Nextcloud releases channel? - Nextcloud

Nextcloud covers a wide range of usages, but everybody is different and has different needs. While enterprises prefer to use very stable versions, techies at home like to try our brand new capabilities, and community members are willing to help test the last beta version. For this reason, we provide release channels, allowing you to choose your own pace of updates. However, there are a lot of different releases channels of Nextcloud and Nextcloud apps, and it can be difficult to know how to pick the right one for your usage. Here is some guidance to help you make the right choice!

First of all, you must think about some questions:

  • what do your users expect from your Nextcloud instance?
  • do you have technical skills?
  • how reliable must your instance be?

Choosing the right channel

As an administrator, you can choose a channel of your preference in the Administrator settings in your Nextcloud instance if you have installed Nextcloud from an archive. Pick the channel that fits your needs best:
  • Your instance is business critical, you need your Nextcloud to be extremely stable, with as few issues as possible, you have no technical skills or no time to experiment or report bugs.
    • You should choose the production channel. You will not enjoy the latest features or the best performance, but you will get a smooth and stable experience.
  • You look for the best compromise between minimal risk and best performance and don't want to worry too much about your Nextcloud instance.
    • Stable channel is for you! It is used by the wide majority of Nextcloud users.
  • You want the latest features and you are willing to report bugs to improve everyone's experience. First of all, thank you! Having beta-testers helps us a lot. If you want to make sure the latest versions will work on your infrastructure, consider grabbing it and do some testing too!
    • The Beta channel best fits your needs. It provides a short-term-stable version to report bugs against. If you find an issue, report it on Github!
  • You want to closely follow Nextcloud development, experiment the latest features, or check a bugfix on your installation.
    • Enjoy the Daily Builds channel and experiment the cutting edge Nextcloud releases! Also, get used to opening issues on Github!
    • Note that you can't go back to the stable version after that. You can choose the Stable channel, but you will have to wait for the next stable release.
releasechannelsmatrix

 

How to upgrade from one Nextcloud version to another?

First of all, keep in mind that all Nextcloud versions will reach their end of life at one point or another. This is why we encourage you to upgrade regularly! You will enjoy our latest security, scalability and features enhancements. So, what should you do if you are still running Nextcloud 9 or 10 and want to upgrade to Nextcloud 12?

The safest way to upgrade your instance and to ensure the integrity of your data is to go from your current version to the last minor release of this version. For instance, if you need to migrate from Nextcloud 10, you should upgrade to the latest Nextcloud 10 release (10.0.4 in this case), then upgrade to the latest Nextcloud 11 release (11.0.3), and then upgrade to Nextcloud 12. You can let the updater handle this for you, though!

1 Like

Thanks for this post.

It would be useful to explain as well when a release becomes available in a channel. I always update through the webinterface from the admin tab. have my updater set to the stable channel. But sofar it does not show Nextcloud 12 as available. I think I have to wait for 12.0.1, but is that one then also ready for production? or is that 12.0.2? Can you add this to the article?

Regards,

Bert

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Yeah, 12.0.1 will be when we push 12 to 11.0.x users, as we typically are a bit slow. Some have it already, by the way :wink:

On the rpi3 release image there is no place to select a channel. Confusing for me as a new user.

Yeah, the snaps take care of upgrading, not Nextcloud itself, so Nextcloud can not offer you this option. It is, I believe, possible from the Snap software itself to some degree - there’s a testing snap you could run.

Would someone point me at where to file a feature request to say on that screen that upgrades are managed by the snap system automatically. (new here).

12.0.1 is out now for some time. But I still don’t see it in the stable channel. Is this something that someone has to do manually, or is should it be added to the stable channel automatically?

Not sure if 12.0.2 is coming to the Snap, it might be that the devs are waiting for 12.0.3 (2-3 weeks from now). You best ask on github or directly on IRC?!

Interestingly the Box updated by itelf late August to 11.0.4

Updated from 11.0.4 to 12.0.3 on my RPI3 (installed with berryboot) by setting from stable to beta and run update from web interface. Set it back to stable after completion. Took about 5 or 6 minutes but went smoothly3-succes-Screenshot at 2017-09-20 17:53:03

See https://github.com/nextcloud/updater_server/pull/83 - 50% of the 11.0.x users should now get 12.0.3, we will give the other 50% access next week!

1 Like