[ANN] bzr 2.5b6 released

[Vincent Ladeuil]

Hi,

This is the sixth (and last (really)) beta of the 2.5 series: 2.5b6

Bazaar <http://bazaar.canonical.com/> is a Canonical project and part of
the GNU project <http://gnu.org/> to produce a free operating system.

2.5.0 is planned to be released in March 2012.

This introduces the support for colocated branches into the '2a' format in a
backward compatible way, fix more glitches in the colocated UI, verify https
certificates for the urllib https client implementation, fix some more
unicode issues and more.

All bugs fixed in previous series known at the time of this release are
included.

The 2.5 API is now frozen as are the strings for translations.

Since this is our very last beta, I'd like to remind packagers and
plugin authors that a special care should be taken to precisely identify
which revisions of which plugins are targeted at the 2.5 series and
ensure that the plugins are compatible with 2.5b6 (and keep paying
attention during the early days of 2.5.0 ;).

A warm thank you to all of you sending feedback, suggestions, even merge
proposals making bzr better !

Bazaar is now available for download from
https://launchpad.net/bzr/2.5/2.5b6/ as a source tarball.

Packages have been uploaded for debian and Ubuntu precise, installers
for osx and windows should follow shortly.

External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

None.

New Features
************

* Support for colocated branches is now available in the default
  format ("2a"). (Jelmer Vernooij)

Improvements
************

* ``bzr switch -b`` in a standalone tree will now create a colocated branch.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #918197)

* ``bzr info`` now reports when there are present (but unused) colocated
  branches. (Jelmer Vernooij, #891646)

* Checkouts can now be into target directories that already have
  a control directory (but no branch or working tree).
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #913980)

* Colocated branches can now have names including forward slashes, to
  allow for namespaces. (Jelmer Vernooij, #907980)

* New HPSS call for ``BzrDir.get_branches``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #894460)

* Checkouts of colocated branches are now always lightweight.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #918828)

Bug Fixes
*********

* ``bzr branch`` now fetches revisions when branching into an empty
  control directory. (Jelmer Vernooij, #905594)

* A sane default is provided for ``ssl.ca_certs`` which should points to the
  Certificate Authority bundle for supported platforms.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #920455)

* ``bzr branch`` generates correct target branch locations again if not
  specified. (Jelmer Vernooij, #919218)

* ``bzr send`` works on treeless branches again.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #921591)

* ``bzr version`` no longer throws a UnicodeDecodeError if the .bzr.log path
  contains non-ascii characters. (Martin Packman, #312841)

* Support scripts that don't call bzrlib.initialize() but still call run_bzr().
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #917733)

* Test for equality instead of object identity where ROOT_PARENT is concerned.
  (Wouter van Heyst, #881142)

* urllib-based HTTPS client connections now verify the server certificate
  validity as well as the hostname.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, Vincent Ladeuil, #651161)


API Changes
***********

* ``config.config_dir`` and related functions now always return paths as
  unicode. (Martin Packman, #825826)

* ``ControlDir`` now has a new method ``set_branch_reference`` which can
  be used for setting branch references. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``ControlDir.destroy_branch`` now raises ``NotBranchError`` rather than
  ``NoSuchFile`` if the branch didn't exist. (Jelmer Vernooij, #921693)

Internals
*********

* A new matcher ``RevisionHistoryMatches`` has been added. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Add new module ``bzrlib.url_policy_open``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #850843)

* ``MutableTree`` has two new hooks ``pre_transform`` and
  ``post_transform`` that are called for tree transform operations.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #912084)


Testing
*******

* Be more careful about closing open files for pypy interoperability.
  (Wouter van Heyst)