A new maintenance branch should be created from main. For example, if main is currently building 2.6 and we want to start work on 2.7, a 2.6.x maintenance branch must be created:

Once the branch has been created, a number of changes must be made both on the new maintenance branch and on main.

On the new maintenance branch:

• Update the following, replacing "main" with the name of the new maintenance branch (for example "2.6.x"):

  • determineGitHubTag in buildSrc/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/build/AsciidoctorConventions.java

  • branch in ci/parameters.yml

On main:

• Update version in gradle.properties to m.n.0-SNAPSHOT (for example 2.7.0-SNAPSHOT)

• Update the following, aligning with the m.n.x milestone for the new version (for example "2.7.x"):

  • main_branch in git/hooks/prepare-forward-merge

  • milestone in ci/parameters.yml

  • Example fly command in ci/README.adoc

  • Build badge links in README.adoc

  • eclipse/spring-boot-project.setup

• Change LATEST_GA to false in ci/pipeline.yml for both update-homebrew-tap and publish-to-sdkman

• Create a new spring-boot-project/spring-boot-tools/spring-boot-maven-plugin/src/main/xsd/layers-m.n.xsd file with identical contents to the previous version

• Update layers XML files beneath spring-boot-project/spring-boot-tools/spring-boot-maven-plugin/src/ to reference the new XSD. You can use a command similar to find spring-boot-project/spring-boot-tools/spring-boot-maven-plugin/src -type f | xargs grep -l layers-2.6.xsd to identify the files to change.

• Set bom.upgrade.policy in spring-boot-dependencies to same-major-version.