Hello,

I've released 4.8.0-rc1, which means several things.

* There are still many pull requests pending. We have decided to keep to the release schedule for 4.8.0 rather than waiting for more testing and merging of these pull requests. If you've contributed and your pull request hasn't yet been merged, perhaps it can be part of 4.8.1 which I anticipate in April.

* We are now in a feature freeze for 4.8.0; I've branched QA_4_8 to accommodate this.

* I anticipate releasing 4.9.0 towards the end of the summer so that the work of our GSoC students can be put to use quickly. I feel that we waited too long for 4.8.0 (for which I blame myself).

* I also anticipate releasing 4.8.1 toward the end of April, in about a month's time.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me and/or the list know.

Isaac