Schedule for the 1.8.7 release

Hi, developers,

After seeing Ruby 1.9.0-1 released earlier today, I, as the release
manager of the 1.8 series, would like to announce here that it is time
to start working on the next release, 1.8.7.

Below is the timeline I made up.  The reason for the slow start (long
period for discussion) is because I'm going on a week's trip next week
to Portland and Seattle.

Schedule for 1.8.7: (subject to change as it proceeds)

    Now - 2008-03-22
      Discuss what features should and/or can be backported, and get
      the release manager to make decisions as to which features are
      going to be worked on for 1.8.7.

    2008-03-23 18:00:00 JST
      Declare feature freeze.  The tracker will be keeping a complete
      list of bugs to fix and new features to implement.

    2008-03-24 - 2008-04-03
      Work on Tracker issues.  New features must be implemented by the
      end of this period, while some bugs may remain.

    2008-04-04 12:00:00 JST
      Declare code freeze.

      - The ruby_1_8_7 branch is forked off from the ruby_1_8 branch.

      - The ruby_1_8_7 branch is frozen from the beginning and any
        change on the branch requires an explicitly approval by the
        release manager.

      - The ruby_1_8 branch is not frozen, however, massive changes
        are forbidden for the moment.

    2008-04-05 18:00:00 JST
      Release 1.8.7-preview1

    2008-04-12 18:00:00 JST
      Release 1.8.7-preview2

    2008-04-20 18:00:00 JST
      Release 1.8.7.
      Lift code freeze.


I realize we have a lot of things to do because the difference between
1.9 and 1.8 (1.8.6) has become huge and so many changes have been made
to 1.8 since 1.8.6 was released.  That is why it is going to take this
long time to make 1.8.7 a decent release for mission critical scenes
yet an exciting and beloved release for ambitious users.

Please make sure to Cc me important mails, especially ones that need
my approval.  I tend to drop a ball on high-volume mailing lists
because of my poor fast reading skills.

For issue tracking, I made a tracker for 1.8.7 release engineering:

   http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=browse&group_id=426&atid=22040

Any changes to the tracker issues will be forwarded to me, so you
don't have to bother pointing them to me via email.

Now, let's start the work!

Regards,

--
Akinori MUSHA / http://akinori.org/