Folks,
Now that release 1.7.55 is out, it's time to start code freeze towards the stable 1.8 release. This means that from now on, new features or code redesigns won't be accepted; only targeted bug fixes that don't look too dangerous will be allowed in. The freeze will get increasingly more strict as we progress towards release.
I know that git makes it easy for everybody to keep working on new things on their own branch, but I'd ask that we all take time to concentrate on fixing bugs, and particularly regressions. I'm hoping that we can make the number of regressions drop significantly, like we did for the previous stable releases.
I will be making release candidates every Friday until we run out of bugs that can be reasonably fixed. Based on previous experience, the code freeze should last between 4 and 8 weeks.
This is also an opportunity to polish things like translations, documentation, web site etc. so there is plenty to do even for non-developers. And most importantly, we need help with retesting as many applications as possible...
Thank you all for your help!