LTS Objectives
1

## 3-year LTS support

Starting with version `2025.02`, the LTS support has been extended to 3 years, replacing the previous 1-year cycle.

2

## Vulnerability tracking & reporting

Tracking of the vulnerabilities affecting Buildroot is available at security.buildroot.org.
LTS stewards ensure this data remains up-to-date by actively maintaining Buildroot packages metadata.

3

## Sponsored LTS stewards

To ensure a consistent release cadence and maintenance workflow, paid LTS stewards are assigned to the weekly LTS maintenance tasks.

4

## Dedicated backports

Vulnerability fixes applied to the `master` branch will be prioritized for backporting to the LTS & stable branches.

Releases

The Buildroot LTS sponsorship initiative has evolved from a more comprehensive understanding of the needs of our user base.
To address these requirements, the release model evolves into the following.
The LTS releases are now extended for a 3-year period. An LTS release is started every 2 years. In between, stable releases are made every 3 months.

2025
2026
2027
2025.02
3 Years Support (LTS)
2025.05
3 mo
2025.08
3 mo
2025.11
3 mo
2026.02
3 mo
2026.05
3 mo
2026.08
3 mo
2026.11
3 mo
2027.02
3 Years Support (LTS)
...

More details about the LTS workflow at buildroot.org/buildroot-lts-tools.

How we work

Each week, the LTS stewards define the set of commits to analyze based on the previous week's commits to the master branch. The commits are then annotated to define a list of candidates for the LTS branches.
On Thursday, the candidates are cherry-picked to a staging branch to be reviewed by the other maintainers. On Thursday evening the branch is synced with upstream and contributors are notified. Feedback from users, sponsors and autobuilders are then collected and vulnerability analyses updated.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
...
Freeze weekly commit set from master
Apply branch specific patches
Analysis & commit annotation
Cherry picking to staging branch
Sync with upstream branch
Update vulns
Sponsorship benefits
1

## Long-term sustainability

Sponsors ensure the long-term sustainability of the Buildroot LTS effort with dedicated stewards assigned to tasks such as backporting, security monitoring and LTS releases.

2

## Recognition of your sponsorship

Sponsors can be publicly acknowledged on the Buildroot website. Sponsors may provide a logo linking to a webpage of their choice.

3

## Direct interaction with LTS stewards

Sponsors may submit queries and requests regarding Buildroot LTS and security updates.

4

## Assignment of priorities for package tracking

Buildroot integrates more than 2000 open source packages, many of which do not offer long-term stable releases or security updates.
Sponsors may submit a priority list indicating:
- Packages of interest
- Architectures of interest

5

## Testing of your packages

To make sure the packages of interest to the sponsors don't include regressions between releases. Sponsors may submit a list of packages to be tested before an LTS & stable release.

6

## Personalized security reports

Sponsors receive personalized security reports for their Buildroot packages in the form of security.buildroot.org with comparison with the upstream branches.

Sponsor now !

Interested ? Contact us at buildroot-lts@buildroot.org to learn more about the different sponsorship tiers and get all the details about the sponsorship.