PDT Build Types
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Released Builds
Releases are builds that have been declared major releases by the committers and PMC- for example "R1.0". Releases are the right builds for people who want to be on a stable, tested release, and don't need the latest greatest features and improvements. Released builds always have an "R" at the beginning of the name i.e. R1.0, R2.0 etc. Non-release builds are named according to the date of the build - for example 20051027 is the build from Oct 27, 2005.
Maintenance Builds
Occasionally, we might find there are a few bugs in a Released Build, so a Maintenance Release will be planned. Until a maintenance release is formally declared and released, it will be called a "Maintenance Build", and will have a prefix of "M". This roughly corresponds to "an integration build" but a maintenance build is typically more stable that an I-Build, since the M-build is based on a declared release (not a new release) and M-builds contain bug fixes only ... not new function, as I-builds do. When the maintenance is finalized, approved, and released, it will become a Released Build.
Stable Builds
Stable builds are integration builds that have been found to be stable enough for most people to use. They are promoted from integration build to stable build by the architecture team after they have been used for a few days and deemed reasonably stable. The latest stable build is the right build for people who want to stay up to date with what is going on in the latest development stream, and don't mind putting up with a few problems in order to get the latest greatest features and bug fixes. The latest stable build is the one the development team likes people to be using, because of the valuable and timely feedback.
Integration Builds
All component teams tag their work in what they believe is a stable, consistent state, and they update the build configuration to indicate that the next integration build should take this version of the component. Integration builds are built from these versioned components that have been specified by each component team as the best version available for the next build.
Nightly Builds
Nightly builds are produced every night from whatever has been released into the HEAD stream of the CVS repository. They are completely untested and will almost always have major problems. Many will not work at all. These drops are normally only useful to developers actually working on the Eclipse Project.