Recommended JIRA Version to Upgrade To?

[Cory Sytsma]

We're finally upgrading our 3.13.5 version, and am wondering which version of JIRA people would recommend we upgrade to? I've been reading and understand there are some advantages to upgrading to a 4.0 version first, then upgrading to 4.3 or higher.

I'm mainly interested in terms of which version is most stable? Has the fewest oustanding problems? I've searched around for Bugs in JRA, but didn't find anything one way or the other.

My inclination is to go to 4.4.4, which appears to be the most current. But not sure if we'd be better off going to a bit older, more stable version. We have about 2500+ users in JIRA user management, 160k issues, if that makes a difference.

Thanks,

Cory

[Eva · Accepted solution]

The short answer is to always go to the latest and greatest - but please note that 4.4.4 is still relatively new (only a month old!), so there might not be that many people who are on that version or known issues yet.

I know there are known issues for 4.4.2 (Atlassian pull that version off) and I am not having much luck with 4.4.3 (my project is using 4.4.1 since September and been loving it).

The long answer is that you HAVE to test out what you (or any system admin) is comfortable with the changes from 3.13.5 to current 4.4 version (or any other changes). There are already significant changes on admin side from 4.3 to 4.4 (big change to the point we all have to relearn JIRA all over again), so I can imagine how much shock you will have going from 3.13 to 4.0 or even 4.4. Best thing to do, is to upgrade JIRA to a test environment (or your laptop) to see if you (and your users) can accept that change first. Then evaluate how much work to go from 3.13 to the version you want.

Also if you have any manual configuration (like customization text) or any Plugin, you probably had to reconfigure (or re-code your plugin) to make it work on the new version.

Hope this helps!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I broadly agree with Eva here. The only thinkg I'd add is that the "point" releases are almost never anything other than fixes for problems with earlier point releases. That means although 4.4.4 is only a month old, it's really only fixes for problems found in 4.4.0, 4.4.1, 4.4.2 or 4.4.3 - it's very unlikely to introduce new problems.

I'd echo what Eva said about 4.4.2 - that one seemed to go quite badly wrong compared with 4.4.1, which is unusual, but 4.4.4 seems to have fixed everything we had problems with in there (although we're pretty much waiting for 5 now - no time to do a 4.4 upgrade with everything else we have to change)

[Cory Sytsma]

Thanks for your feedback Eva and Nic. Sounds like going with 4.4.1 or 4.4.4 is fine, no need to go with older versions.