Prereleasestatus

Prereleasestatus is a label used in software release management to describe the current state of a prerelease artifact as it moves through planning, testing, and deployment. It captures where a build stands in its prerelease lifecycle and helps teams decide whether it is ready for broader testing or for final release. In practice, prereleasestatus is stored as metadata in release repositories, artifact catalogs, or CI/CD dashboards and is updated automatically by pipelines or manually by release managers.

Common values describe distinct stages, such as planned, in_progress, ready_for_testing, under_testing, prerelease, released, with variants for failed, canceled, or blocked. The exact set and naming vary by organization, but the concept is to distinguish prerelease artifacts from stable or production releases. Prerelease versions often accompany semantic versioning identifiers like 1.2.3-alpha or 1.2.3-rc.1 to signal prerelease status at the artifact level, while the prereleasestatus field signals the operational state within the pipeline.

Usage: prereleasestatus informs deployment gates, testing scope, and stakeholder communication. It can be used to restrict production deployment to artifacts with a released or final status, while prerelease states allow internal testing, beta distribution, or canary deployments. Best practices include documenting the lifecycle, ensuring automated promotion criteria, and aligning statuses with test results and risk assessment. See also release management, versioning, CI/CD, and artifact repositories.