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Django 1.1 RC 1 release notes

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July 21, 2009

Welcome to the first Django 1.1 release candidate!

This is the third -- and likely last -- in a series of

preview/development releases leading up to the eventual release of

Django 1.1, currently scheduled to take place approximately one week

after this release candidate. This release is targeted primarily at

developers who are interested in trying out new features and testing

the Django codebase to help identify and resolve any critical bugs

prior to the final 1.1 release.

As such, this release is not yet intended for production use, and any

such use is discouraged.

What's new in Django 1.1 RC 1

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The Django codebase has -- with one exception -- been in feature

freeze since the first 1.1 beta release, and so this release candidate

contains only one new feature (see below); work leading up to this

release candidate has instead been focused on bugfixing, particularly

on the new features introduced prior to the 1.1 beta.

For an overview of those features, consult :doc:`the Django 1.1 beta

release notes </releases/1.1-beta-1>`.

URL namespaces

--------------

The 1.1 beta release introduced the ability to use reverse URL

resolution with Django's admin application, which exposed a set of

:ref:`named URLs <naming-url-patterns>`. Unfortunately, achieving

consistent and correct reverse resolution for admin URLs proved

extremely difficult, and so one additional feature was added to Django

to resolve this issue: URL namespaces.

In short, this feature allows the same group of URLs, from the same

application, to be included in a Django URLConf multiple times, with

varying (and potentially nested) named prefixes which will be used

when performing reverse resolution. For full details, see :ref:`the

documentation on defining URL namespaces

<topics-http-defining-url-namespaces>`.

Due to the changes needed to support this feature, the URL pattern

names used when reversing admin URLs have changed since the 1.1 beta

release; if you were developing applications which took advantage of

this new feature, you will need to update your code to reflect the new

names (for most purposes, changing ``admin_`` to ``admin:`` in names

to be reversed will suffice). For a full list of URL pattern names

used by the admin and information on how namespaces are applied to

them, consult the documentation on :ref:`reversing admin URLs

<admin-reverse-urls>`.

The Django 1.1 roadmap

======================

As of this release candidate, Django 1.1 is in both feature freeze and

"string freeze" -- all strings marked for translation in the Django

codebase will retain their current form in the final Django 1.1

release. Only critical release-blocking bugs will receive attention

between now and the final 1.1 release.

If no such bugs are discovered, Django 1.1 will be released

approximately one week after this release candidate, on or about July

28, 2009.

What you can do to help

=======================

In order to provide a high-quality 1.1 release, we need your

help. Although this release candidate is, again, *not* intended for

production use, you can help the Django team by trying out this

release candidate in a safe testing environment and reporting any bugs

or issues you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the central

place to search for open issues:

    * http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open a new ticket only if no existing ticket corresponds to a

problem you're running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress

toward the 1.1 release, takes place daily on the django-developers

mailing list:

    * http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

... and in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If you're

interested in helping out with Django's development, feel free to join the

discussions there.

Django's online documentation also includes pointers on how to contribute to

Django: 

    * :doc:`How to contribute to Django </internals/contributing>`

Contributions on any level -- developing code, writing documentation or simply

triaging tickets and helping to test proposed bugfixes -- are always welcome and

appreciated.