Announcing ICU4X 2.0 Beta 1

[Manish Goregaokar (मनीष गोरेगांवकर)]

The ICU4X-TC is happy to announce the release of ICU4X 2.0 Beta 2.

This release includes a lot of the remaining changes slated for 2.0. The major difference from 2.0-beta1 is that it fills in FFI for all new APIs except for those in datetime.

This release also brings ICU4X to CLDR 47 Beta 1, ICU 77 RC, and TZDB 2025a.

This release includes some breaking changes over 2.0 beta 1.

 - The `datetime` crate has continued to evolve, with some API renames, though the shape of the crate is mostly the same.
 - `icu_timezone` has been renamed to `icu_time`, and has been restructured.
 - Users of `--no-default-features` may find themselves needing to explicitly opt in to an `alloc` feature for some crates, as ICU4X is gaining the ability to be no-alloc.
 - Many `std` features have been removed from crates that no longer need them.

Please refer to the changelog for a full set of differences.

This release is intended to be a stepping stone to the final 2.0 release: we do not expect major changes after this, except potentially to datetime FFI. Clients are encouraged to update to this to experience a smoother 2.0 upgrade. Please send feedback by creating an issue or discussion on GitHub.

Thanks,

-Manish on behalf of ICU4X-TC