# 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. While each release is always tested and walks through several stages you might want to wait to verify that a new version is compatible and stable. To stay on a fixed version, you only 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 it has been rolled-out. You can do this by setting another environment variable:

export CARDINAL_BRANCH=nightly # nightly, stable (default)