Install a release candidate

You can make an important contribution to the Salt Project by installing and testing release candidates (RCs) of Salt when they are made available prior to a release. Testing the RC and reporting any bugs or performance issues helps ensure code quality and minimizes disruptions to service when Salt users upgrade their Salt infrastructure.

What is a release candidate (RC)?

Release candidates are early versions of Salt that are released prior to an official Salt release.

Report bugs

To report any bugs you find while testing a release candidate, open an issue on the Salt repository on GitHub and write [RC] in the issue title. For example: [RC][BUG] Description of bug.

Install using packages

RC builds are available in the Salt package repositories.

To install release candidate packages:

  1. Use the standard minor install instructions for your operating system. See Manual install directions by operating system.

  2. On the step where you normally enable / restrict to an LTS or STS version, restrict to RC: TBD

    To install the latest RC, run the following commands:

    TBD

    TBD

    The following are URLs for the latest release candidate:

    Arch

    File type

    Download install file

    AMD64

    exe

    TBD

    AMD64

    msi

    TBD

    x86

    exe

    TBD

    x86

    msi

    TBD

    Download the installer that matches your operating system. Double-click the installer to install Salt. You can also install the release candidate from the command line using various switches. Those can be found by running the .exe installer with the /? option.

    TBD /?

    For options for the .msi installer, see the documentation here.

Install using bootstrap

You can install a release candidate of Salt using one of the scripts in the Salt bootstrap project.

TBD

TBD

Install using pip

To install the release candidate using pip from PyPi:

  1. Install the build dependencies:

    To pip install the latest RC release:

    Run the following commands:

    sudo dnf install python3-pip python3-devel gcc gcc-c++

    Run the following commands:

    sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev gcc g++

    Install:

    • pip

    • Python header libraries

    • C and C++ compilers

    There are 3 requirements for Salt on Windows:

    • Python (3.10+)

    • VC Redistributable - 2013 for Salt 3006.x and below - 2022 for Salt 3007.x and above

    • Visual Studio Build Tools

    Install a compatible version of Python and the corresponding version of VC Redistributable for the version of Salt you want to install.

    Salt dependencies require Visual Studio Build tools to compile properly. The easiest way to install the build tools is with the install_vs_buildtools.ps1 powershell script in the Salt repo. Run the following command to download and run this script:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Process -Force
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]'Tls12'
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/saltstack/salt/master/pkg/windows/install_vs_buildtools.ps1 -OutFile .\install_vs_buildtools.ps1
.\install_vs_buildtools.ps1

  2. Install Salt using the following command:

    sudo pip install salt==$rc_tag_version

    pip install salt==$rc_tag_version

    To pip install the latest RC release, using RC_RELEASE as an example:

    sudo pip install salt==RC_RELEASE
    pip install salt==RC_RELEASE