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Spring's 3.0 version is now GA release, before that they have launched 3.0 RC1, RC2 version Also, there was Spring 3.0 M2 version. What's the difference between GA, RC, M versions?

gstackoverflow
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Rakesh Juyal
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3 Answers3

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GA = General availability (a release); should be very stable and feature complete

RC = Release candidate; probably feature complete and should be pretty stable - problems should be relatively rare and minor, but worth reporting to try to get them fixed for release.

M = Milestone build - probably not feature complete; should be vaguely stable (i.e. it's more than just a nightly snapshot) but may still have problems.

SR = Service Release (subsequent maintenance releases that come after major -RELEASE).

gavenkoa
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Jon Skeet
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    I see SR versions of Spring, are they Stable Releases? (sp. Spring Data Rest) – ocodo Apr 05 '16 at 01:45
  • @Slomojo: Never heard of that - I'd look through the documentation carefully to try to find out. (Service Release perhaps?) – Jon Skeet Apr 05 '16 at 05:44
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    It is **Service Release**, found a little while ago. Thanks for the response. – ocodo Apr 05 '16 at 05:48
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    As per ocodo - SR is Service Release, as detailed here: https://spring.io/blog/2015/06/26/spring-cloud-service-release-angel-sr3 – James Baxter Jun 09 '17 at 09:54
  • @user1955934: No idea, I'm afraid. (I'd suggest looking in the release history.) – Jon Skeet Sep 11 '19 at 14:17
  • What's really confusing is when there are 0.8.0.RC2 and 1.0.0.M7 like for r2dbc-postgres and 1.0.0 milestones appear alongside 0.8.0 RCs. How does that work? – yuranos Nov 27 '19 at 20:14
  • @yuranos87: That sounds like something to ask for the specific project. – Jon Skeet Nov 27 '19 at 21:47
  • @JonSkeet what is difference between milestone build and alpha/beta built ? – Number945 Dec 21 '19 at 15:50
  • @BreakingBenjamin: That would probably depend on the project. For Spring itself, I don't know - it's been years since I've used it. – Jon Skeet Dec 21 '19 at 17:47
  • @JonSkeet thnx for reply. I was asking in general and not tied to spring project. I mean which is recent - milestone build or alpha ? – Number945 Dec 21 '19 at 17:51
  • @BreakingBenjamin: I don't know what you mean by "recent" but again, it would depend on the particular project. There's no general rule for this in my experience. I don't think milestone releases are used as often these days. – Jon Skeet Dec 21 '19 at 19:40
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Refer to Software release life cycle on Wikipedia. The whole life cycle is described in detail.

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VishalDevgire
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Grant Zhu
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I think:

  • GA - Generally Available, or publicly allowed to brutalized and subjected to intense torture.
  • RC- Hmm, these could be a good candidate to release to the public and also see if there are any critical bug remaining.
  • M2- Hmm, we have reached the 2nd milestone in our project plan, let's see what the users think and gather some ideas about the bugs that may still persist.

Usually, its Milestone release, then RC releases and then a GA release.

In an Open Source project, you usually would have a public plan for releases, which can actually give you good ideas about the project's release plans. Like, what quality criteria determines a RC, GA or a Milestone release.