Django 1.3 release candidate available

We're almost there!

Tonight we've issued the first release candidate for Django 1.3. Barring major issues discovered with this package, the final Django 1.3 release will follow a little over a week from now, most likely being released in Atlanta at PyCon US 2011.

For the impatient, you can download the release candidate package here (and get the checksums for it here), but there are a couple of things worth noting:

As with all pre-release versions of Django, this is not intended for production use; the purpose of this release candidate is to identify any major issues which could or should block the final 1.3 release.

intended for production use; the purpose of this release candidate is to identify any major issues which could or should block the final 1.3 release. As this is a release candidate, it does not have standalone release notes. Instead, please refer to the draft 1.3 release notes, which will be used to produce the notes accompanying the final 1.3 release. If you notice something missing from those notes, please file a ticket in Django's Trac (see below) as soon as possible.

Note regarding translations

At this point, Django 1.3 is in feature freeze (and has been since the 1.3 beta release), as well as translation string freeze; between now and the final release, no new strings or changes to existing strings will be accepted. Translators are encouraged to submit their final translations as quickly as they can. Interested parties can track the progress of Django's translations on the 1.3 status page at Transifex.

Additionally, we are still seeking translation coordinators for the following languages:

bg (Bulgarian)

cy (Welsh)

fy_NL (Frisian)

gl (Galician)

hi (Hindi)

is (Icelandic)

km (Khmer)

kn (Kannada)

ko (Korean)

lt (Lithuanian)

mk (Macedonian)

ta (Tamil)

vi (Vietnamese)

If you're interested in becoming a translation coordinator for one of these languages, you can sign up and join the Django translation project at Transifex.

Python version compatibility

The release of Django 1.2 was notable for being the first to change our policy toward Python version compatibility; 1.2 dropped support for Python 2.3, establishing Django's support as Python 2.4 and higher (within the 2.X series).

Django 1.3 will not drop support for Python 2.4; however, it is exceedingly likely that Django 1.3 will be the final release of Django to support Python 2.4, and that Django 1.4 will require a minimum of Python 2.5. A final decision on this matter will be reached next week at PyCon, and that decision will be announced with the Django 1.3 final release notes.

It is expected that a document detailing Django's Python 2.x deprecation process, and timeline for moving to Python 3.x, will be made available concurrently with, or shortly after, the Django 1.3 release.

How you can (still) help with Django 1.3

As always, we wouldn't be able to produce Django without the help of the community. And even at this late stage in the release process, we still need and greatly value any contributions you can make.

Since Django 1.3 is now at the release-candidate stage, we are actively soliciting reports of blocking issues which could prevent the final release; as such, we encourage as many users as are able to download and test (in a non-production environment) tonight's release candidate package.

If you spot a bug, please swing by Django's Trac instance, search to see if it's been reported, and if not report it as a new ticket.

Additionally, over the next week we will be finalizing the Django 1.3 documentation and translations. If you've got documentation you'd like to see land in the final 1.3 release, please open a ticket with a documentation patch, or -- for existing tickets -- bring it up on the django-developers mailing list. If you can contribute to one of Django's translations, please join the Django translation project at Transifex to do so.

And if all goes well, we'll be back here again in a week for the final Django 1.3 release, live from PyCon in Atlanta.