Recently, the Hyperledger part of Linux Foundation launched Hyperledger Fabric - v1.4 LTS, the first Long-Term-Support release of Fabric. According to the company, the new release is a critically important development for those beginning to deploy Hyperledger Fabric solutions into production.
Source: HyperLedger
Fabric v1.4 LTS focuses on production operations and developer ease of use. The most important production-focused features of Fabric fall into four key categories -
Serviceability and Operations: According to the company, v1.4 is a giant leap forward when it comes to logging improvements, health checks, and operational metrics. Along with a focus on stability and fixes, v1.4 is the recommended release for production operations. Future fixes will be delivered on the v1.4.x stream, while new features are being developed in the v2.0 stream.
Improved programming model for developing applications: Earlier versions of Fabric included an SDK and chain code for Node.js - the popular server-side JavaScript scripting framework. The programming model for both of these has a significant upgrade to make developer's life easy. Now developers can focus more on the application logic rather than needing to delve deep into the nitty-gritty.
The company also provides a comprehensive business scenario and tutorial to get started with the new developer experience.
Enhanced data privacy: Latecomers linked to private data collections can now retrieve private data for prior transactions which they’re entitled to see. And client access control is now automatically enforced within chain code by a simple configuration, saving you from the need to write the chain code logic.
Hand-on tutorials: Commercially focused training to help developers move up the Fabric learning curve quickly and efficiently to speed adoption and deployment.
Additionally, regarding patch releases the company says: "for Hyperledger Fabric v1.4 LTS, the Fabric maintainers are pledging to provide bug fixes for a period of one year from the date of release (Jan 10). This will likely result in a series of patch releases (v1.4.1, v1.4.2, …), where multiple fixes are bundled into a patch release."
To know more, you can visit the official announcement
here.