Upcoming Django releases

With Django 1.0 out the door and a successful inaugural DjangoCon behind us, it's time to look ahead to the future, which includes two releases:

• Django 1.1, currently targeted for release in March 2009.
• Django 1.0.1, currently targeted for release next month.

Both of these releases, of course, will follow our policy of maintaining compatibility in the 1.0 release series.

Django 1.1 timeline

At the moment, we're aiming to release Django 1.1 on or around March 16, 2009, or roughly six months following the release of Django 1.0. As covered in our release process documentation, the 1.1 release cycle will consist of three phases: feature proposal, feature work and bugfixing/polishing. Since Django 1.1 is happening on a six-month schedule, that means two months for each phase of development; the relevant dates for 1.1 have already been discussed on the django-developers mailing list, but here's the quick breakdown (these dates are still rough estimates, and may change as needed):

• November 10, 2008: A draft feature list for 1.1 will be posted.
• November 15, 2008: The 1.1 feature list will be finalized, and no new feature proposals will be accepted for 1.1.
• January 15, 2009: All major features must be merged into Django trunk, trunk will go into the initial 1.1 feature freeze and work will shift to bugfixes.
• March 16, 2009: Django 1.1 will be released. As with 1.0, Django 1.1 will be preceded by several pre-release packages to help focus development effort and isolate bugs.

March is still quite a ways off, of course, but keep in mind that the feature-proposal window will be closing in a couple of weeks; if there's something you'd really like to see in Django 1.1 and you haven't already started a discussion of it on the django-developers list, you'll want to do so quickly.

Django 1.0.1 timeline

In the much more immediate future, we're preparing to release Django 1.0.1, which will consist solely of bugfixes and similar improvements to the Django 1.0 codebase. Django 1.0.1 will be a recommended upgrade for anyone who's currently using or migrating to Django 1.0.

Because 1.0.1 will only involve bugfixes, with no feature additions to propose or test, the release process for it will be somewhat abbreviated. Here are the key dates:

• October 31, 2008: Django 1.0.1 beta. Though it will be called a "beta" release, this will mainly serve as a preview of 1.0.1, and will be production-quality; its primary purpose will be to give folks an idea of what's been fixed since the 1.0 release and a last opportunity to submit patches for any fixes they'd like to see make into into 1.0.1 final.
• November 14, 2008: Django 1.0.1 will be released.

From an administrative perspective, the 1.0.1 release will not involve any special categorization or milestones in the ticket tracker; with a release of this type, administrivia in Trac is far less important than simple working code, and any bug is a candidate for fixing up until the day of the release. So if there's a particular issue you'd like to see solved for 1.0.1, the best way to ensure the fix makes it into the release is to provide a working patch. As always, preferential treatment will be given to patches which match our contribution guidelines, especially to patches which include unit tests that both demonstrate the bug and demonstrate the success of the solution. Also, remember that patches for 1.0.1 should be created against the 1.0.X release branch, rather than against trunk.

Posted by James Bennett on October 24, 2008