This is one of the articles from the Software Release Engineering series that I have been working on. Suggestions on topics to cover are very welcomed.
What is a release candidate
Release Candidate, or RC, is a version of software that’s released prior to the finalized version — a.k.a. General Availability, or GA version. It plays a crucial role to enable users to try out and provide feedback, identify bugs and get them fixed, so that the GA version reaches the desired quality standard before hitting the public.
RC and GA releases
The diagram below shows various stages that leads to a RC and then later the GA releases.
Pre-release Testing
Before the release process gets kicked off, some testing are usually executed in order to gain basic confidence there’s no resolved major issues that could jeopardize the release.
If any serious issues are identified at this stage, they are usually prioritized by the engineering team to get them resolved. And the release schedule could be impacted and needs adjustment accordingly.
RC release
Once the pre-release testing are finished and confidence are gained that all known major issues…
