Stable vs. RC.

Hi all

what is in your opinion difference between "stable" and "release candidate" versions?
In some developers opinion rc = stable. In my opinion, its not true, there is no equality there. Simply because of the issue of finding bugs within the code. Its obvious that many (not to said most) of programmers would like to get 'good reputation' and to release their programs with as few bugs as possible, but - on the other hand - the rat race throughout devs is more and more visible nowadays. They are at the race who will release more (standalone) programs. Thats why we have more and more programs with major bugs.

Whats your point of view on this?

 

RC is code complete you do not add new features or improvements. At this point you start gamma testing, if you find bugs you fix them and after some time another RC is released. When you are happy with it you can make it RTM after that its Gold. So yes RC and Stable are not the same but in some cases it is when you have good developers.

 

I never run RC on live sites. It is just too risky - let the other admins be the final bug testers while your site runs without issue on a stable version.

I do test beta and RC releases on my local test environment with mirrors of the data of my larger forums to ensure everything is working properly and there are no glitches with the addons I have on my sites.

 

Depends who is writing what if you take Xenforo the beta releases are very stable many people run them in production environment, is it smart no but if you trust the developers then you can do it. Something like Chrome i would not run beta its not as stable as i would like to see it.

 

Unless the RC has something I really want, I'd use Stable. Better reliability is preferred.

 

I personally usually don't see much difference between RC (Release Candidate) and Stable (or "Gold") as they've both been extensively tested for bugs and usually been fixed. I usually try and steer clear of BETA, and DEV releases though, unless testing or the feature is essential, as these are typically prone to have larger bugs with only minimal testing and probably should not have been used live...or at least, that's the way I've always seen it

 

There isn't too much of a difference. To me, RC says the developer thinks all loose ends are wrapped up and everything is stable but isn't going to officially support it until he's 100% sure.

The change to Gold (or stable) from RC is more of an administrative one from my prospective. I've seen quite a few projects go from RC to stable without releasing ZIP.