[Question posted by a user on YugabyteDB Community Slack]
The YugabyteDB core documentation for upgrades doesn't seem to address compatibility between versions. Can you upgrade from 2.8 to 2.13? Or is there a less direct path available? The last upgrade attempted from 2.7 to 2.8 only worked for us building a 2.8 cluster and doing a snapshot restore with replication and then an application cutover. Is that the best method for moving from 2.8 to 2.13? https://docs.yugabyte.com/latest/manage/upgrade-deployment/
In v2.8 we announced 'Seamlessly upgrade to major releases without stopping the database' see this release blog.
Also, just one upgrade could work, but we don’t officially support going from stable to latest releases or the reverse (latest to stable). There could be subtle issues because of backports status. So 2.8 to 2.12 is fine, the same 2.8 to 2.14(in future), or 2.9 to 2.13 — but 2.8 to 2.13 could face issues.
We do not officially support downgrades though.