What is Production Version (Stable Release)?

The production version of a software release, which is sometimes also called the stable release, is the last release candidate (RC) version that has passed all testing to bring it to the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) phase. The production version may still have some bugs and inefficiencies which need to be addressed and modified prior to the final release to the public. The production version precedes the RTM phase, the general availability (GA) phase, and the golden master build (GM) phase. It is also quite common for the production version to have two distinct versions.