Version and release policy

September 23, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

FlagQuantum supports CPython 3.10 through 3.12. flagquantum.version.__version__ is the only package-version source; build metadata, wheel names and runtime flagquantum.__version__ derive from it.

FlagQuantum uses semantic versioning. While the project is below 1.0, minor versions may contain explicitly documented API migrations; patch versions are backward-compatible fixes. Stable public API removals require the documented deprecation window and removal version. Runtime evidence and benchmark schemas carry independent schema versions and migration rules.

Version 0.1.0 is the historical FlagOS 2.1 development snapshot. Version 0.2.0 is the first release governed by the stable API manifest and the capability-maturity matrix. Alpha, beta and release-candidate builds must use a PEP 440 prerelease suffix before a GitHub release is published. Accelerator or multi-node claims additionally require scheduled hardware evidence and benchmark audit; CPU contract tests alone are not scalability evidence.

Dependency groups are intentionally separated:

  • core: bounded PyTorch and local FlagQuantum execution;
  • dev: tests, formatting, typing and package verification;
  • jax: optional bounded JAX quantum kernels;
  • cuda: optional Triton kernels without changing native PyTorch CUDA support;
  • braket, cirq, pennylane, quafu, qiskit: isolated provider and interop SDKs;
  • interop-all: the exact aggregate of those five interop groups;
  • cudaq: an isolated heterogeneous compiler toolchain, excluded from the portable interop-all aggregate;
  • azure: the optional Microsoft QDK Azure Quantum client (qdk[azure]), excluded from all and interop-all; the core install and the core import path stay without it, and only a real remote run reaches an Azure workspace;
  • examples: datasets and transformer examples;
  • viz: Matplotlib circuit rendering;
  • all: the historical development/runtime aggregate, excluding providers;
  • Torch-FL/FlagOS: externally managed and never installed by FlagQuantum.

A local wheel/sdist build is verification, not publication. Publishing is allowed only from an intentional release commit after supported Python and dependency bounds, clean installs, artifact contents, licenses, reproducible builds, checksummed manifests and release contracts pass. The current development branch must not publish unfinished builds.