Hey All,

The following is based on previous release plans. Let me know if there's anything missing. One thing I want to do differently is the bug hunt. No score for this release, only going for bugs milestoned for 0.49 instead. This also means we need to hit the tracker to ensure the milestoned ones are correct and to milestone and must fixes. The number of bugs already fixed in trunk is huge, so getting the work out for further testing "soon" is better. Dates are subject to change as always, hopefully they could be moved up (with the exception of the the time between Feature Freeze and Hard Freeze, for the sake of the translators). Translators, I would recommend getting started sooner rather than later.

1. Open development. (In Progress)

2. Chill. (September 21, 2012) Development focuses on wrapping up. No further refactoring. Identify 'make distcheck' issues Triage bug reports Run an About Screen contest First draft of Release Notes. Update tutorials and other docs

3. Frost. (October 5, 2012) Most development complete. Release Notes should be >90% filled in. Bug Hunt: Target those milestoned for 0.49. Post alpha quality tarball.

4. Feature Freeze. (October 26, 2012) No further development work. Disable features that can't be finished in time. Focus on critical bug fixing. Finalize all tutorials, docs, etc. Finalize all extensions. Translators create/update translations. Inkscape must pass 'make distcheck' Post beta quality tarball.

5. Hard freeze. (November 23, 2012) Only release wardens can commit to mainline. No further string changes. Focus on release-critical bug fixing. Finalize translations, release notes, etc. Post Release Candidate tarball. Packagers test creating pkgs.

6. Branch. (December 7, 2012) Establish the Stable Branch for release Complete any late-late-late work. Final verification of packaging, release notes, docs, etc. Publish more release candidates until ready for release. Plan 0.49.1+ release(s), as needed

7. Release. (December 21, 2012) Post inkscape-0.49.tar.gz Post packages Post official announcements

8. Open development.

Yes, it seems like a ridiculously short timeframe given our history of making releases happen and how much we've strayed in the past. I do however feel it is doable given the change in the bug hunt requirement for this cycle. That usually holds us up. Also, no platform specific bugs will hold up this release. We will release for specific platforms as issues are taken care of.

If anyone has objections or concerns, please speak up. As stated in the past... this is doable. We're good, we're smart, we're competent, and we have the resources... we just need to be focused to make this happen. Let's do this!

Cheers, Josh