Nightly Build
You may have stumbled upon “nightly” version of a software and wondered what it is. Here is the story:
You are probably familiar with the different version names of a software:
- Pre-alpha
- Alpha
- Beta
- Release candidate
- Final or Gold (aka General availability release)
In Open Source world, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. One of the major ones is the nightly build. Nightly builds are versions that are usually automatically checked out from the revision control system and built, typically over night; these versions allow the testers to test the recently implemented functionality immediately, and find the new bugs.
Example:
