7 General Availability (GA) Releases

GA releases are releases recommended for production systems. The overall goal is to produce a new GA release every 18 to 24 months. GA releases can be found on the MySQL Developer Zone.

GA releases are produced as follows:

• A GA release is based on a DMR.

• The selected DMR undergoes additional testing and bug fixing; then a first RC (release candidate) is produced and made public.

• The release candidate undergoes evaluation by customers and users; this can cause a need for more RC cycles until GA quality will be reached.

• The GA release is released and announced.

Figure 2 GA Releases