[isabelle-dev] Towards the Isabelle2015 release

[Makarius]

We are now past the fork point for the Isabelle2015 release. One informal 
and one formal release candidate have already been published earlier; more 
will be coming soon.

Here is a summary of the status of the Isabelle development process:

    * https://bitbucket.org/isabelle_project/isabelle-release/ is where the
      final release preparations happen before roll-out in approx.
      4 weeks (or more).

      The starting point is
      https://bitbucket.org/isabelle_project/isabelle-release/commits/9d8a0a6781c3

    * http://isabelle.in.tum.de/repos/isabelle is back in post-release mode
      right now (changeset b11401808dac).  Anything pushed there is for the
      next release after Isabelle2015.

    * AFP needs to be understood wrt. isabelle-release within the next few
      days, until Gerwin has made a fork of afp-devel vs. afp-2015 and
      announced it publicly.

    * mira tests isabelle, not isabelle-release

    * isatest tests isabelle-release

    * isabelle-users is the place to discuss Isabelle2015-RC versions

    * isabelle-dev is the place to discuss ongoing post-release development


The isabelle-release repository has no public push access. Any changes 
that are relevant for the release need to be sent to me via email 
(produced by "hg export" or "hg bundle"). Changesets need to be prepared 
from a current state of isabelle-release, not the ongoing post-release 
development, and applied to only one of the two repository branches.

Changes to the actual code base should be limited to really important 
things. Changes to documentation can be taken lightly -- we've had 
relatively few updates on the manuals this time and there are still a few 
weeks left to improve on the text. (I will try to revisit the 
Isabelle/jEdit and implementation manuals shortly.)

During the forked state of the two repositories, big upheaveals on the 
isabelle repository should be avoided, so that the isabelle-release branch 
can be merged back cleanly after several weeks; but it is better to 
publish small changes now than to stockpile them for a long time.


 	Makarius