Get ready for the next Bitbucket Data Center Long Term Support (LTS) release

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Hi Data Center Community,

I’m excited to share that Bitbucket Data Center 8.19 will be our next Long Term Support (LTS) release for Bitbucket, planned for Q1 calendar year 2024.

LTS releases contain backported bug fixes to provide improved security, stability, and the top admin and user value inclusive of all the features released since the previous Bitbucket LTS release. Additionally, Bitbucket 8.19 will include several new features designed to help accelerate developer productivity, improve the admin experience, and strengthen security. If you manage complex systems that require careful planning and infrequent upgrades, we recommend planning to upgrade to Bitbucket 8.19 when it becomes available. Learn more about LTS releases.

For those of you who only upgrade to LTS versions, check out a few of the already-released features included with Bitbucket 8.19:

Powerful productivity and sustainable scalability

• Mark files “unread” in a pull request: Keep better track of reviewed and pending files in large pull requests by marking files as "unread" in the pull request diff view, allowing you to revisit files you’ve already opened (8.11).

• Templates for pull request commit messages: Establish a standard practice for your pull requests by adding consistent, informative commit messages to create a useful Git commit history without wasting time copying and pasting the required details for each pull request (8.12).

• Filtering the projects list: Boost efficiency when you use filters on the Projects page to immediately find the project you want by its name (8.13).

New advantages for admins

• New SSH, HTTP, and SCM ticket metrics via JMX monitoring and log file: Enjoy efficient in-product diagnostics and timely resolution of performance issues with new SSH, HTTP, and SCM Ticket metrics through JMX monitoring (8.10).

• Easy identification for licensed users: View easily identifiable licensed users in the global list of all users from external and internal user directories to confidently make reasoned decisions on license usage and plan your future licensing costs (8.12).

• Improvements to the support zip creation: Efficiently build a support zip in the Atlassian Troubleshooting and Support Tools (ATST) app with a new design and enhanced functionality on the Create a support zip page (8.13).

Strengthened security

• Stricter controls of repository permissions: Create consistent settings across all repositories in your project with new controls for hooks, merge checks, merge strategies, and branch settings (8.10).

• Encryption of properties in Bitbucket config files: Use your preferred method to encrypt all the values of bitbucket.properties and enjoy added support for AWS Secrets Manager as an additional option to protect values in the bitbucket.properties file (8.11).

• At-a-glance commit signatures: Monitor the security of commits and quickly react to any suspicious changes to your code with Commits Page at-a-glance views to see if a commit has a verified signature (8.13).

• Support of security keys for Git: Protect your code with new support for the ED25519-SK and ECDSA-SK keys, which are designed to work with FIDO2/U2F hardware authenticators like YubiKey and SoloKey, offering a safer substitute for passwords or traditional SSH keys (8.13).

Remember, the Bitbucket LTS will also include every feature released between now and 8.19, so follow along with the Data Center roadmap, as well as the Bitbucket release notes to see all the features that will be included. Bug fixes and security improvements coming with this LTS release can also be found in the release notes.

Note that if you are currently on currently on Bitbucket 7.17, the end of life (EOL) for that version is October 5, 2023. Bitbucket 7.21 EOL is March 2, 2014. Thanks for being part of our community!

Bitbucket Data Center Team