[ANN] bzr 2.4b5 released

[Vincent Ladeuil]

Hi,

Our fifth and **last** beta has been released: 2.4b5.

2.4.0 is planned to be released in August 2011.

2.4b5 contains all known bug fixes (including the ones we made for the
previous stable releases).

Thanks to all participants, whether you sent merge proposals, comments,
suggestions and feedback, we very much appreciate all of them.

Bazaar is now available for download from
https://launchpad.net/bzr/2.4/2.4b4/ as a source tarball.

Installers are available for windows and OSX.

Reminder for people trying their first 2.4beta: since 2.4b3, we've
stopped supporting python-2.4/2.5 (including Ubuntu Hardy) for the
*betas*, the 2.3 stable series will maintain compatibility with
python2.4.

If you're a plugin author, please make sure you have a clearly
identified release compatible with 2.4 (preferably with a dedicated
series like http://pad.lv/p/qbzr does or at least a tag for the version
you'd like to be to carried by the installers and the ppas).

Whatever you decide, keep in touch with the packagers or just reply to
this mail. There is no urgency but on the other hand packagers may not
be able to carry the right version of your plugin when 2.4.0 will be
packaged. The bzr API is frozen for the 2.4 series so what works today
for your plugin should still work for 2.4.0, don't rush new features
(you'll be able to do minor releases for the 2.4 series, but if you have
a working version, just release it ;).

And now for the gory details:

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

None.

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

* New command ``verify-signatures`` to check if all commits or specified commits
  have digital signatures from trusted keys.  Requires python-gpgme to be
  installed.

* New option ``--signatures`` for ``bzr log`` to display digital signature
  verification results for each commit.

* Config option acceptable_keys to list which GPG keys are verified as trusted.

* Config option validate_signatures_in_log to always show signatures in 
  ``bzr log``.

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

* ``Branch.open`` is now about 3x faster (about 2ms instead of 6.5ms).
  (Andrew Bennetts).

Bug Fixes
*********

* Display a proper error message when a config file content cannot be
  decoded as UTF-8 or when it cannot be parsed.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #502060, #688677, #797246)

* Generate a single conflict (instead of two) when merging a branch
  modifying and renaming a file in a branch that deleted it (or vice-versa).
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #688101)

* Give a more helpful message when the bzr executable doesn't match the
  library.  (This typically happens because of a misconfigured PYTHONPATH
  or half-installed bzr.)  
  (Martin Pool, #804553)

* Properly load utf8-encoded config files. (Vincent Ladeuil, #799212)

* ``GraphThunkIdsToKeys.merge_sort`` now properly returns
  keys rather than ids. (Jelmer Vernooij, #799677)

* ``TreeTransformBase.fixup_new_roots`` can now check that a tree root
  is present. (Jelmer Vernooij, #801257)

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

* New attributes ``WorkingTreeFormat.supports_versioned_directories`` and
  ``RepositoryFormat.supports_versioned_directories``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #765815)

* The "revno" field type when using the python version-info format is now
  a string (to handle dotted revnos) (Benoît Pierre, #796259)

Internals
*********

* Start implementing localization, starting with command help text (but not
  the command options themselves). This will allow bootstrapping the bzr
  internationalization process. (Inada Naoki)

Testing
*******

* Fix test failures when running as a homeless user (debian buildd). Tests
  leaking into ``${HOME}/.bzr.log`` should be detected properly now.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #798698)