ZERO Critical Bugs, but No Drupal 7 RC - Why?

A few hours ago Angie @webchick Byron tweeted that she had committed the last critical bug to take the count down to zero. The release plan for Drupal 7 have always said that when that happens then the first Release Candidate would be out. The Drupal community on twitter of course went crazy after that tweet expecting it to happen. Well, only a couple of hours a new release was out, but it was a new beta, not RC1.

Release Candidate a HUGE Step

Personally I see this as a good thing. There are still far to many bugs in the issue queue left - 516 in total. Of these 516 bugs left there are 184 that are classified as Major. Many of these, and the normal ones, have patches and have also been tested by the community to work, they just needs to be checked by Angie and Dries and if they are OK be committed to core.

Then baking a release candidate just because the known critical's have gone to zero would have been wrong. Moving from beta to RC is a huge step. Beta versions are expected to still have problems and be far from ready to be used live. A release candidate on the other hand should have far less bugs. Basically the idea is that it is the last verification before a product goes gold, i.e becomes an official release.

When Will the Release Candidate Come?

Yes, that is probably the most common question among drupalers right now. My guestimate is that it will be released very soon, probably within a few weeks. This is because the community, particularly Angie and Dries, needs to go over the remaining bugs to make sure there are no more critical issues in there. They also want to go over all bugs that already have patches that have been reviewed and confirmed to work and get those committed to core.

With 516 bugs in the queue that is a lot of information to go through. It is also likely that some patches needs to be tested again because other patches that has been committed breaks them.

Update: Angie has now posted Drupal 7.0 Beta 3 released on drupal.org where she confirms my prediction and says the goal is to get the first RC out before November 30.

Worth the Wait

One of the things I like most about the Drupal community, especially with our leaders, is that they do a fantastic job under the stress and pressure they are put under. It would have been so easy to make the RC tonight based on that there are currently no more critical bugs. Instead they didn't fall for that temptation, made another beta to give them the time needed to make sure Drupal 7 will be as rock solid as we all want.

Doing the right thing is a red thread in the Drupal community and it is also a major reason why Drupal is so successful in winning high profile projects.

Lets keep it like that!