Release plans recap for the road to QGIS 1.0

Hello world. Its been a while since I posted anything here so I thought I would post an update for those curious about the planning for QGIS 0.11.0 and QGIS 1.0.

- Code currently in trunk will become QGIS 0.11.0 at the end of this month (first week of July actually)
- After QGIS 0.11.0 is branched off SVN, the code in trunk will become QGIS 1.0
- QGIS 1.0 is is planned to be released mid August.
- We are implementing a GUI freeze as of today (as part of QGIS 0.11.0 release process) and extending up to QGIS 1.0 so that documentation team have ~2 months lead time to get the documentation ready before QGIS 1.0,
- the release cycle for QGIS 1.0 (running over July to mid Aug) will be focused on polishing source code and bug fixing.

There are 3 exceptions to the freeze as relates to the user interface:
1) composer is being rewritten by Marco and is not ready for 0.11.0 yet
2) the labelling functionality is being rewritten - it was originally a GSOC project but the student pulled out and I believe Martin is picking up the task.
3) If bug fixes neccessitate small UI changes we will allow it. For example there may be a spelling mistake or similar. In these cases we will notify the community team of the change (its the responsibility of the committer to do this) so that if needed you can update that particular dialog's screenshot in the docs.

Following 1.0 release we will aim to do a 1.0.1 bug fix release for around the 20th of September to coincide with FOSS4G2008.

The 1.x releases will be API compatible and the plan is for 1.x releases to be bug fix releases only, new development after 1.0 will focus on the QGIS 2.0 code base which I estimate will follow QGIS 1.0 1 to 2 years later (we need to determine timelines and feature spec still).

We'll keep you posted as we head towards the launch of QGIS 1.0.

Tim

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