Overview of core branches and tags

To understand the naming conventions for the branches and tags used for Drupal core, you should already be familiar with the version numbers for core.

Branches

Each stable release series of Drupal core has its own branch. For example, the 4.7.x releases (4.7.0, 4.7.1, etc.) all live on the DRUPAL-4-7 branch, the 5.x stable releases all live on the DRUPAL-5 branch, and 6.x stable releases live on the DRUPAL-6 branch. The naming convention is that if you strip off the last digit from any official version number for core, convert all periods (.) to hyphens (-) and add DRUPAL- to the front, you'll have the corresponding branch name that the release came from.

Official release tags

Every stable release of core has a corresponding tag in the CVS repository so that both developers and end users can always re-create the exact set of files that went into that release. The naming convention for these tags is as follows:
BranchName-PatchLevel

• BranchName indicates what branch (and therefore, the release series, core API, etc) the release is from.
• PatchLevel indicates the specific set of changes in that release (the final digit of the version number).

For example: the 4.7.4 release is tagged with DRUPAL-4-7-4 to show it is from the DRUPAL-4-7 branch, and has a patch level of 4.

Beta and release candidate tags

As explained in the Betas and release candidates section of the Version information handbook, Drupal core puts out preliminary releases before major new stable versions are released. The CVS tags that correspond with these releases are explained below: