# Could we have a new VTK 9.x release soon?

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/could-we-have-a-new-vtk-9-x-release-soon/5464
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [March 30, 2021, 2:43pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/could-we-have-a-new-vtk-9-x-release-soon/5464 "2021-03-30T14:43:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 5

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### Author: ![mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/mwestphal/32/19_2.png) [@mwestphal](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/could-we-have-a-new-vtk-9-x-release-soon/5464/5 "2021-04-19T14:36:58Z")

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> What version? I don’t know!

Use the last released version, 9.0.1

> [@Paul\_Harris](#):
>
> I checked the git repo, and there isn’t even any branches for version 8 hotfixes?

There is no hotfixes for previous version of VTK.

> There seems to be a lot of API changes in the pipeline, how are others keeping their codebase stable?

Every single API changes implies a legacy code to ensure retrocompatibility. This is part of the VTK code guidelines.

> There are so many merge requests, must be a lot of thrash on the master?

Each merged Merge Request is reviewed and merged by experienced members of the VTK community.

> And what is the “release” branch for exactly? Is this a “more stable” version of master?

The release branch is used for new patch release (eg: 9.0.2 if it ever comes) and only contains bugfixes, it does not contains new features as master does.

> I’m wondering if I should just be branching of version 8.20

You definitely should not. the VTK 9 breaking changes are for the better.

> I should also mention that this would be a good page to document the release plans: hasn’t been updated for 9.x at all yet …

Indeed, the wiki is being phased out. You can find documentation about the VTK 9 changes and release notes here: [VTK 9.0.0 - #6 by ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/vtk-9-0-0/3205/6)

That being said, we definitely needs to improve and clarify this process.

Are you a VTK contributor @Paul_Harris ? Maintaining and improving a opensource project as complex a VTK is a very big task and we will take any help we can get.

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