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Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Hotfix

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈhɑːtfɪks/nounCommon term

In software engineering, hotfix means: An urgent fix for a serious problem in production, released quickly outside the normal release schedule.

In Turkish: acil düzeltme, acil yama

How it is used

Teams prepare, ship and deploy hotfixes, often from a separate 'hotfix branch'. A hotfix is usually small, focused on one issue and reviewed quickly but carefully.

Example sentences

  1. We pushed a hotfix at midnight because users couldn't log in.

  2. Create the hotfix branch from the release tag, not from main.

Common collocations

  • deploy a hotfix
  • hotfix branch
  • emergency hotfix
  • ship a hotfix
  • fixTo change code so that a problem no longer happens. As a noun, 'a fix' is the change that solves the problem.
  • productionThe live environment where real users use the software, as opposed to development or test environments.
  • releaseA version of a product that is made available to users, or the act of making it available. Also a verb: to release a new version.
  • roll backTo return a system to an earlier working version after a release or change causes problems.
  • root causeThe deepest, original reason a problem happened, as opposed to the symptoms that people noticed first.

More terms: Release and Maintenance

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