Django 1.8 beta 1 and 1.7.5 released

Today the Django team has released Django 1.8 beta 1, a preview/testing package that represents the second stage in the 1.8 release cycle and an opportunity for you to try out some of the changes coming in Django 1.8.

Django 1.8 has been designated as Django’s second “Long-Term Support” (LTS) release. It will receive security updates for at least three years after its release. Support for the previous LTS, Django 1.4, will end 6 months from the release date of Django 1.8.

For full details, see the in-development 1.8 release notes.

Only bugs in new features and regressions from earlier versions of Django will be fixed between now and 1.8 final (also, translations will be updated following the "string freeze" when the release candidate is issued). While the beta release was delayed a week and a half from the originally planned date, we've fixed several issues that should result in a better experience with the beta. The current release schedule calls for the release candidate in two and half weeks from now. We'll judge from the number of bug reports we get between now and then whether or not to delay the release candidate. Watch the django-developers mailing list thread for updates.

As with all alpha and beta packages, this is not for production use. But if you'd like to take some of the new features for a spin, or to help find and fix bugs (which should be reported to the issue tracker), you can grab a copy of the package from our downloads page. And as always, signed MD5, SHA1, and SHA256 checksums of the 1.8 beta package are available.

In addition to the beta release, we've issued a bug fix release for the 1.7 series, 1.7.5. See the release notes for details.

The PGP key ID used for these releases is Tim Graham: 1E8ABDC773EDE252.