# Versioning

By

micartey

Cardinal uses by default the latest stable release

Cardinal consists of a loader that always uses the latest release so that you don't have to download newer versions. To stay on a fixed version, you have to set an environment variable before starting the server:

export CARDINAL_HASH=<hash>

The current hash can be shown by executing the cac command and save the last 8 characters.

While stable versions are more beneficial, you might want to test out newer features, detections or fixes before they have been rolled-out. You can do this by setting another environment variable:

export CARDINAL_BRANCH=stable # nightly, stable (default) 

Alternatively, you can specify the branch using a jvm flag. The enviroment variable will have a higher priority though, so make sure to remove it beforehand.

-DCardinalBranch=nightly