[documentation] release system is live, drupal.org is back

[Derek Wright]

in case you're not reading the front page of drupal.org frequently...

http://drupal.org/node/94000
New release system for Drupal contributions now deployed!

the part all of you definitely need to read:
http://drupal.org/node/94000#developers
Along with the new release system, there have been a lot of updates  
and changes to the Drupal CVS repository this year. Because of these  
changes, all CVS account holders and project maintainers should  
review the updated CVS and Project documentation even if they think  
they are already familiar with CVS. The handbook outlines the  
policies and procedures to use going forward for maintaining your  
projects[1], managing your releases[2] and proper branching and  
tagging[3] of your contribution on Drupal.org. More people using the  
same processes means there will be more people to help others and  
this will standardize our release process for the future.

Be sure to review the new version number documentation[4] so you will  
know how to properly take advantage of the release system for your  
modules and themes.

If you are unfamiliar with CVS branches and tags, please read the  
updated CVS introduction[5] to these concepts. There is also a new  
Maintainer quick-start guide[6] to help people new to CVS get up to  
speed on the basics of using Drupal's contributions repository[7].

[1] http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/projects

[2] http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/releases

[3] http://drupal.org/node/93999

[4] http://drupal.org/handbook/version-info#contrib

[5] http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/introduction

[6] http://drupal.org/node/94179

[7] http://drupal.org/node/321



also, for those who happened to be around for the "fun":

http://drupal.org/node/94023

"Update: Apologies for the delay in bringing drupal.org back up. In  
spite of many painless conversions on scratch.drupal.org, as feared,  
something went terribly wrong during the update on drupal.org. It  
took us a few hours to work around the problems this caused with some  
creative coding and sneaky SQL tricks. Immediately after the site was  
up, it experienced about an hour of very sluggish response time. This  
was due to a major SQL load put on the database server during the  
conversion itself (a huge backlog of queries the mysqld was  
struggling to process), the flood of traffic from bringing the site  
back on-line, and some lingering PHP configuration issues that we had  
setup to try to debug the faulty steps of the upgrade. The good news  
is that the site is back now, it seems to be as responsive as ever,  
no actual harm was done, and the new release system is working..."