Django 1.0 beta 2 release notes

Welcome to Django 1.0 beta 2!

This is the fourth in a series of preview/development releases leading up to the eventual release of Django 1.0, currently scheduled to take place in early September 2008. This releases is primarily targeted at developers who are interested in testing the Django codebase and helping to identify and resolve bugs prior to the final 1.0 release.

As such, this release is not intended for production use, and any such use is discouraged.

What’s new in Django 1.0 beta 2

Django’s development trunk has been the site of nearly constant activity over the past year, with several major new features landing since the 0.96 release. For features which were new as of Django 1.0 alpha 1, see the 1.0 alpha 1 release notes. For features which were new as of Django 1.0 alpha 2, see the 1.0 alpha 2 release notes. For features which were new as of Django 1.0 beta 1, see the 1.0 beta 1 release notes.

This beta release includes two major features:

Refactored django.contrib.comments
As part of a Google Summer of Code project, Thejaswi Puthraya carried out a major rewrite and refactoring of Django’s bundled comment system, greatly increasing its flexibility and customizability. Full documentation is available, as well as an upgrade guide if you were using the previous incarnation of the comments application..
Refactored documentation
Django’s bundled and online documentation has also been significantly refactored; the new documentation system uses Sphinx to build the docs and handle such niceties as topical indexes, reference documentation and cross-references within the docs. You can check out the new documentation online or, if you have Sphinx installed, build the HTML yourself from the documentation files bundled with Django.

Along with these new features, the Django team has also been hard at work polishing Django’s codebase for the final 1.0 release; this beta release contains a large number of smaller improvements and bugfixes from the ongoing push to 1.0.

Also, as part of its ongoing deprecation process, Django’s old form-handling system has been removed; this means django.oldforms no longer exists, and its various API hooks (such as automatic manipulators) are no longer present in Django. This system has been completely replaced by the new form-handling system in django.forms.

The Django 1.0 roadmap

One of the primary goals of this beta release is to focus attention on the remaining features to be implemented for Django 1.0, and on the bugs that need to be resolved before the final release. As of this beta release, Django is in its final “feature freeze” for 1.0; feature requests will be deferred to later releases, and the development effort will be focused solely on bug-fixing and stability. Django is also now in a “string freeze”; translatable strings (labels, error messages, etc.) in Django’s codebase will not be changed prior to the release, in order to allow our translators to produce the final 1.0 version of Django’s translation files.

Following this release, we’ll be conducting a final development sprint on August 30, 2008, based in London and coordinated online; the goal of this sprint will be to squash as many bugs as possible in anticipation of the final 1.0 release, which is currently targeted for September 2, 2008. The official Django 1.0 release party will take place during the first-ever DjangoCon, to be held in Mountain View, California, USA, September 6-7.

What you can do to help

In order to provide a high-quality 1.0 release, we need your help. Although this beta release is, again, not intended for production use, you can help the Django team by trying out the beta codebase in a safe test environment and reporting any bugs or issues you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the central place to search for open issues:

http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open new tickets if no existing ticket corresponds to a problem you’re running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress toward the 1.0 release, takes place daily on the django-developers mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

...and in the #django-dev IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. If you’re interested in helping out with Django’s development, feel free to join the discussions there.

Django’s online documentation also includes pointers on how to contribute to Django:

contributing to Django

Contributions on any level – developing code, writing documentation or simply triaging tickets and helping to test proposed bugfixes – are always welcome and appreciated.

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