All software available in the Orchard Software Centre undergoes a multi-stage testing process. These stages are referred to as releases.
The stable release is the production version of Orchard containing tested and approved software. This is the production release of Orchard, the one which we primarily recommend using.
The testing release contains packages that have not been accepted into the stable release yet, but they are in the queue for that. The advantage of the testing release is that it contains more recent versions of software. Each department should have a few superusers following the testing release to provide feedback on potential issues and test upcoming software prior distribution.
The unstable release is where active development of Orchard occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers. However, we are happy to add your system to the unstable release if you would like to live on the edge and provide us helpful feedback.
By default every system is in the stable release. If you would like to be considered for one of the more volatile releases, please contact your IT Support team.
There is an RSS feed available for each release: stable, testing, and unstable. You might be interested in our fully automated software staging process.
