[Springframework-developer] Road map for Spring 1.2.6 and 1.3 RC1

[Juergen H. <ju...@in...>]

Developers,

It looks like we have gathered enough reported issues that justify a 1.2.6
release. Most of them are rather minor and/or just affect specific
deployment environments. We should nevertheless get proper fixes out early
rather than wait for 1.3 final to get them out in production shape.

See our current JIRA road map for details:
http://opensource2.atlassian.com/projects/spring/browse/SPR?report=com.atlas
sian.jira.plugin.system.project:roadmap-panel

The current plan is to release 1.2.6 in about 2 weeks, with 1.3 RC1
following 2 weeks afterwards. All relevant fixes, even if just doc fixes,
should go into 1.2.6, with 1.3 RC1 being entirely focused on the new feature
areas planned. No  fixes that can be achieved in 1.2.x should be deferred
till 1.3.

In terms of proceeding, I would suggest to let CVS HEAD remain at 1.2.x
level for at least a further week, with 1.3 work continuing in the sandbox
for the time being. Some major 1.3 feature areas (such as async JMS) are
still not 100% finished, so there's still work to be done in the sandbox.

Once all planned 1.2.6 fixes are done, I would suggest to create an actual
1.2 maintenance branch and dedicate CVS HEAD to 1.3 finalization. At this
time, the relevant sandbox packages (Portlet support, async JMS, etc) should
be moved over; by then, those packages should already be finished and
polished.

I'd like to encourage everybody to dedicate time to the remaining 1.2 issues
identified in JIRA! Of course, finishing the 1.3 feature areas in the
sandbox is important and urgent as well. The above-mentioned release dates
have to be considered as hard deadlines, to allow for 1.3 final to happen by
late November.

Juergen