There have been monthly minor updates for some considerable time, hence the 24,12 in the version 2024 12th month.
There may on occasion be more, a minor or bug fix. This however, can be delivered either by the VPS and engine updates or even as an emergency update and they would ordinarily not change the 24/xx/ figure but the 24/12/xxxx.xxx build number would change.
Thanks for the explanation.
I wouldn’t take that as hard and fast rule as ordinarily Alpha testing is done by an in house team, before being released to Beta testing by volunteers.
My last 4 years in the army were as a Systems Analyst/Programmer. Senior Analysts would generally have knowledge of the design specification and do Alpha testing and beta testing. These senior analysts would usually ensure the issues picked up in Alpha had been addressed, before giving final clearance to release the program.
Whilst this is how we did it in a military environment, I would imaging it very similar in a commercial software environment, e.g. users generally don’t do Alpha testing.
I was surprised, because I am not one of the users who install Avast for testing.
I am an end user, and when I tried to update the Avast program, this version came up, and I didn’t understand.
Since I am not one of the people who use Avast to be a tester, why did this update come up for me?
I was supposed to ignore it and only get this version for those who test.
Unless AVAST changed the way it does things.
Which is why I would be surprised if it were as simple as a = alpha testing
Especially when you can’t volunteer to Alpha test, Beta test yes, but again you would have to opt in.
That’s why I’ve seen other users here on the forum saying that their version is the same as the one I updated to.
I think it was Avast’s choice to do this with two releases in the same month. 
The problem being we don’t know what this ‘a’ stands for and I have never seen it. That said I have yet to update to 24.12.xxxx 
The way is to wait for someone from the Avast team to tell us on the forum what this letter “a” means at the end of the Avast version.
Well I just updated and the small ‘a’ is there, but I still don’t think it would be an indication of it being an Alpha build. I can’t see why millions of Avast users would suddenly become Alpha testers when they haven’t even signed up to be Beta testers.
That said then surely they would see a small ‘b’ at the end of the build number.
You’re right, there must be small changes and they put letters at the end indicating that there was a change.
Just like Kaspersky, there are always letters at the end.
What I noticed in your image is that yours is 24.12.9725a (build 24.12.9725.897) and mine is 24.12.9725a (build 24.12.9725.0) - Look at the difference there is. I can’t understand this small difference since mine and yours are updated at the same time.
That isn’t unusual I have seen this before and ordinarily it is a different region/language and or perhaps different components.
I understand. It’s great to exchange ideas with people who understand the Avast product well.
Hello friend @DavidR I have one more question, I think you can answer me, if you can’t, I hope the Avast team can talk about something.
According to the image below that I just removed from my task manager because there are icons that are in the old format, and the name of the supplier is GEN DIGITAL Inc and others are AVAST SOFTWARE?
How is this inconsistency?
Avast, along with a number of other Antivirus companies/products are part of the larger Gen Digital Inc.
I think it is a move towards commonality - I think in AVG for instances they also see components by Avast Software.
You’re welcome, over 20 years of using Avast I have gathered some information along the way.
It’s especially the “0” at the end that’s rather strange, I’ve already seen different versions of the last number but never a “0”.
Like Dave, I too have “897”.
I rarely see “a” additions for Avast versioning scheme, but in my experience it’s quite common for other software to use that scheme for very small updates. It succeeds to “b” and “c”…
IIRC it’s something related to Windows 7 compatibility, SHA-1 code signing certificate.
Sorry I take back above, somewhat related but off the mark. What Avast remediation exe is described here. It seems they keep using old binaries as it’s version is 21.4.
Really, I’m surprised. 
I’m surprised that Avast hasn’t updated this binary for a long time.
This should have been fixed by now.
