magic-removal call for testing

[Adrian Holovaty]

Hi all,

At this point, Django's magic-removal branch is stable enough that
we're ready to begin the merging process. I've been running the branch
on chicagocrime.org for a couple of weeks with no problems. As of
right now, Jacob and I are freezing feature additions to the branch
and concentrating on fixing any remaining bugs and -- more importantly
-- updating ALL of the documentation. Documentation is one of Django's
strongest selling points, and we don't want to risk having inaccurate
docs.

So this e-mail is a call for all interested parties to start using the
magic-removal branch (if you're not already), poking around at it and
reporting any bugs you find. We're removing the "for developers only"
designation and encouraging anyone and everyone to test it. Consider
it a pre-release status.

Note I said "reporting any bugs" -- not reporting features you want to
see, or lamenting the lack of features you thought magic-removal would
solve but doesn't. (I've noticed people have the tendency to shrug
things off as, "Oh, that'll be fixed in magic-removal." That thinking
is understandable, given the long time the branch has been around, but
it's inaccurate.)

Specifically, here are some things that still haven't been solved in
magic-removal -- and won't be, for the merge:

* Model subclassing. We'll deal with this after the merge.

* Validation-aware models. We'll deal with this after the merge.
Automatically-generated manipulators are still around at this point.

* Ajax in Django (Dojo integration). We'll deal with this after the merge.

Please hold off on reporting problems with the docs that obviously
still haven't been converted to magic-removal. And, yes, the tutorial
is being rewritten and not finished yet -- no need to file a ticket on
that. We know! :)

Timeline: Let's aim for a merge on next Friday, April 28. That should
give us enough time to work on documentation and iron out last-minute
bugs.

This page has all you need to know about the magic-removal branch:

http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/RemovingTheMagic

Please feel free to ask questions on the django-developers mailing list.

Adrian

--
Adrian Holovaty
holovaty.com | djangoproject.com

[Rudolph]

That's certainly good news! I use M-R for a few weeks on a development
server and it feels really solid. I think it's a good decision not to
wait for subclassing, validation-aware models and ajax.

Thanks *very* much for all the hard work!

Rudolph