Operations, maintenance and contracts
Release candidate
In short and in plain language
A release candidate is a version of a program just before the final one.
The maker puts it out so that bugs can be found early.
It is not meant for the real shop. But it is useful for testing.
The short form is RC. Several get numbers, such as RC1 and RC2.
Definition
A release candidate is a pre-release version of a piece of software that is almost finished. The vendor publishes it so that bugs can be found before the final version. It is not meant for a live shop, but on a test environment it can show early what an update changes. It is abbreviated RC; if there are several before a version, they are numbered, for example RC1 and RC2.