We are pleased to announce that the first Drupal 4.4.0 release candidate is available. A list of the major changes can be found in the CHANGELOG file. Right now most things are wrapped up, so we'd like you to help polish this release and help iron out final issues: your comments on the stability, correctness and performance of this release candidate are more than welcome!

You can download the latest release candidate at http://www.drupal.org/drupal/drupal-4.4.0-rc.tgz.

This package is rebuilt twice a day, so make sure to download a fresh copy every now and then to get the latest bug fixes. For now, no new features or functionality will be added. Only bug fixes, documentation updates and small usability improvements will find their way into the release candidate and thus into the final Drupal 4.4.0 release. When Drupal 4.4.0 is released, upgrading from the release candidates to the final version should be a breeze.

Installation and upgrading

For instructions on installing or upgrading Drupal, please consult the installation documentation and the instructions carried out by the update.php script. For the most trouble free transition, it is recommended that you first upgrade existing installations to Drupal 4.3.0, Drupal 4.3.1 or Drupal 4.3.2.

Also, please take note that several documents (e.g. INSTALL, CHANGELOG, etc.), modules (e.g. import module) and themes (e.g. UnConeD and Marvin) have been renamed or moved to the contributions repository. It is recommended that you (temporarily) remove these files before you run the upgrade script.

Developer information

Developers should be aware that custom themes and modules for Drupal 4.3.0 need to be updated to work with Drupal 4.4.0. If you maintain a theme or module in Drupal's contributions repository, this is the perfect time to make sure your code is up to date. A list of changes with Drupal 4.3.x can be found in the Module developer's guide and Theme developer's guide.

The DRUPAL-4-4 CVS branch will be created soon so we can pick up active development on new features. In the meantime all Drupal contributors are encouraged to focus on the pending bugs as well as the documentation.

Update, March 6, Dries: I just created the DRUPAL-4-4 branch meaning that the HEAD branch is opened up again for development. The Drupal 4.4.0 release will be pulled from the newly created DRUPAL-4-4 branch after it have proven to be stable.

Update, March 14, Dries: please remind that the DRUPAL-4-4 branch is available for use in the contributions repository. If you have updated your module/theme to work with Drupal 4.4.0-RC please branch appropriately. Updated themes and modules are available from http://drupal.org/project/releases/4.4.