Django 1.2 Roadmap

This document will eventually detail the schedule and roadmap towards Django 1.2. For the moment, it's a placeholder.

What will be in Django 1.2?

Proposals for feature additions in Django 1.2 are now open - add your proposal to the wiki .

GeoDjango

1.2 features for GeoDjango are being coordinated on the wiki and the GeoDjango mailing list.

Schedule

Django 1.2 is beyond deadline at this point. It will be released as soon as it is in good enough condition to be released. Please help contribute to resolving any issues on the list of open tickets.

The complete schedule follows. Note that dates are plus or minus a couple of days as needed:

January 15, 2009	"Major" feature freeze for 1.2; work phase ends, and any major incomplete features will be postponed.
February 23, 2009	Django 1.2 alpha.
March 23, 2009	Django 1.2 beta. Feature freeze; only bug fixes will be allowed after this point.
April 2, 2009	Django 1.2 rc 1. and string freeze
April 13, 2009	Django 1.2 final

We'll hold a series of Sprints to work on 1.2 starting in late December; stay tuned to the Sprints page and/or the django-developers mailing list for details.

Process

Each feature on the list (both "must-have" and "maybe") will have a "lieutenant" (a term stolen from the Linux community) and a committer assigned. It's OK if this is the same person, but it's better if not: one committer can keep an eye and commit from patches from a number of trusted lieutenants. See Version1.2Features for the current list of lieutenants and committers.

James Bennett, as the release manager, will be in charge of keeping the schedule. He'll keep track of who's working on what issues so that bug reports can be efficiently routed; he'll also nag, cajole and (if necessary) berate developers who are in danger of missing deadlines.

How you can help

The only way we'll meet this deadline is with a great deal of community effort. To that end, here's how you can help:

• Read the guide to contributing to Django and the guide to Django's release process.

  These guides explains how our process works. where to ask questions, etc. It'll save everyone time if we're all on the same page when it comes to process.

• Work on features from the list above.

  The joy of Open Source is that nobody gets to tell you what to do; you can scratch whichever itch you like. However, if you work on items not on the list of 1.2 features, you should expect that your patch won't get checked in until after 1.2.

  Get in touch with the lieutenant/committer for the feature you'd like to work on and help out. Or just find open tickets and start submitting patches!

• Attend a sprint (in person or in IRC).

  We'll have four or five sprints between now and March. Lots of work gets done at sprints, and there's usually someone around willing to help new developers get started.

• Organize tickets.

  • Feature tickets should go in the "1.2 alpha" or "1.2 beta" milestone.

    Which one? Well, major changes must be made before the alpha, and minor feature changes before the beta. So "major" feature additions go in the alpha milestone, and minor additions in the beta one. If you're not sure, then the feature is minor.

    Bugs are not to be part of these milestone; any bug is a candidate for fixing and should be left un-milestoned. The exception is bugs in features added for 1.2; those should be in the "1.2" milestone.

• Test the release snapshots (alphas, betas) against your code and report bugs.

  We need lots of testers if we're to have a bug-free release. Download a snapshot or an SVN checkout and give it a try!