Drupalistas rejoice (again) -- we've reached another major milestone on the road to the official 5.0 stable release! The latest 5.0 release candidate code is now installed and running on http://scratch.drupal.org. This means that all of the modules and themes installed on drupal.org have been ported to the 5.x API.

Running the release candidate on a large site like drupal.org is an important way to flesh out any remaining bugs in the code, and the first step is running it on our test site. Please help us get 5.0 stable enough to release by checking out http://scratch.drupal.org and seeing if you find anything that doesn't work how you expect. We need your help testing, so read more to find out how...

Providing feedback

This test site is using a snapshot of the drupal.org database as of 2006-12-22, so you should be able to login directly using your drupal.org identity (you do not need the "[username]@drupal.org" trick, just the "[username]" part). If you find any problems, please submit an issue (here on drupal.org, not scratch.drupal.org). You should search the existing issue queues before you submit a new issue, in case you have encountered a known bug.

Please try to submit your issues for the appropriate project. In most cases, the code would be from Drupal core itself. However, if the page you are viewing starts with "/project/issues" or you have trouble submitting test issues on scratch.drupal.org, you should submit to the Project issue tracker queue. If the page starts with "/project" (but doesn't include "issues") please use the Project queue. If there is a bug regarding CVS integration (see below) you should report it to the CVS management/tracker queue. Otherwise, use your best judgement...

Contribution maintainers -- help test the release system

If you maintain a contribution (module or theme) on drupal.org, please help test out the new release system. There is now a scratch copy of the contributions CVS repository for making test releases. Please read http://drupal.org/node/105016 for more information about the scratch repository and how to provide feedback.

When will 5.0 be released?

The official 5.0 stable release will be released when it is stable. ;) If no more critical issues emerge and Drupal.org has been running without problems, we will provide an official stable release. If problems emerge however, we may produce any number of release candidates in between. You can also help improve the quality and stability of the forthcoming 5.0 release by testing and reviewing patches that have already been submitted to address bugs and improve usability.

Comments attached to this post reporting problems are likely to get lost or ignored, so please use the issue queues as explained above. Thanks for helping to make the 5.0 release come more quickly, and happy bug hunting!

Drupal version: Drupal 5.x