Product Release/Builds FAQ

Product Releases - Builds FAQ

What are software builds?

For an overview of how software is built, please see Wikipedia

What are the various builds of OOo and what are they for?

Name	What is it	Who is it for	Who is it not for	Cautions / Installation
Developer Snapshot	The very latest 'work in progress' build of AOO	Used by developers and testers to check code changes are performing as expected	Everyday users	Only available in English (US). May contain significant bugs; may not save files correctly (and so may corrupt existing files)
Beta	An early view of the next major release of AOO. A beta has all the features of the new release, but may still contain significant bugs	Reviewers, enthusiasts, testers	Everyday users	By default installs alongside the stable version of AOO. May not save files correctly after use (and so may corrupt existing files)
Release Candidate	Intended to be the next stable release. If no show-stopper bugs are found, this will simply become the next version of AOO	Testers, translators, documentation writers, reviewers…	Users wanting a fully tested product	By installation, this overwrites the current version of AOO installed on a PC. For parallel installation, read this.
Stable / Final Release	AOO tested and ready for production use, identified by a unique version number	Everyday use in a wide variety of languages

What builds are available?

• New builds are announced by the QA project - this information is also available as an RSS feed.
• There's also a record of all builds
• And information on planned releases

Where can I find these builds?

• The primary source for downloads is https://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html
• Note that old builds are regularly dropped from servers to make room for the newer builds

How can I help in the testing process?

See the Quality Assurance pages, and/or ask at your native language project.