===============================
Django 1.2 beta 1 release notes
===============================

February 5, 2010

Welcome to Django 1.2 beta 1!

This is the second in a series of preview/development releases leading
up to the eventual release of Django 1.2, currently scheduled to take
place in March 2010. This release is primarily targeted at developers
who are interested in trying out new features and testing the Django
codebase to help identify and resolve bugs prior to the final 1.2
release.

As such, this release is *not* intended for production use, and any
such use is discouraged.

This document covers changes since the Django 1.2 alpha release; the
:doc:`1.2 alpha release notes </releases/1.2-alpha-1>` cover new and
updated features in Django between 1.1 and 1.2 alpha.


Deprecations and other changes in 1.2 beta
==========================================

This beta release deprecates two portions of public API, and
introduces a potentially backwards-incompatible change to
another. Under :doc:`our API stability policy </misc/api-stability>`,
deprecation proceeds over multiple release cycles: initially, the
deprecated API will raise ``PendingDeprecationWarning``, followed by
raising ``DeprecationWarning`` in the next release, and finally
removal of the deprecated API in the release after that. APIs
beginning the deprecation process in Django 1.2 will be removed in the
Django 1.4 release.


Unit test runners
-----------------

Django 1.2 changes the test runner tools to use a class-based
approach. Old style function-based test runners will still work, but
should be updated to use the new :ref:`class-based runners
<topics-testing-test_runner>`.


Syndication feeds
-----------------

The :class:`django.contrib.syndication.feeds.Feed` class is being
replaced by the :class:`django.contrib.syndication.views.Feed` class.
The old ``feeds.Feed`` class is deprecated. The new class has an
almost identical API, but allows instances to be used as views.

Also, in accordance with `RSS best practices`_, RSS feeds will now
include an ``atom:link`` element. You may need to update your tests to
take this into account.

For more information, see the full :doc:`syndication framework
documentation </ref/contrib/syndication>`.

.. _RSS best practices: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile


Cookie encoding
---------------

Due to cookie-handling bugs in Internet Explorer, Safari, and possibly
other browsers, Django's encoding of cookie values was changed so that
the characters comma (',') and semi-colon (';') are treated as
non-safe characters, and are therefore encoded as ``\054`` and
``\073`` respectively. This could produce backwards incompatibilities
if you are relying on the ability to set these characters directly in
cookie values.


What's new in 1.2 beta
======================

This 1.2 beta release marks the final feature freeze for Django 1.2;
while most feature development was completed for 1.2 alpha (which
constituted a freeze on major features), a few other new features were
added afterward and so are new as of 1.2 beta.


Object-level permissions
------------------------

A foundation for specifying permissions at the per-object level was
added in Django 1.2 alpha but not documented with the alpha release.

The default authentication backends shipped with Django do not
currently make use of this, but third-party authentication backends
are free to do so. See the :doc:`authentication docs </topics/auth>`
for more information.


Permissions for anonymous users
-------------------------------

If you provide a custom authentication backend with the attribute
``supports_anonymous_user`` set to ``True``, the ``AnonymousUser``
class will check the backend for permissions, just as the normal
``User`` does. This is intended to help centralize permission
handling; apps can always delegate the question of whether something
is allowed or not to the authorization/authentication system. See the
:doc:`authentication docs </topics/auth>` for more details.


``select_related()`` improvements
---------------------------------

The ``select_related()`` method of ``QuerySet`` now accepts the
``related_name`` of a reverse one-to-one relation in the list of
fields to select. One-to-one relations will not, however, be traversed
by a depth-based ``select_related()`` call.


The Django 1.2 roadmap
======================

Before the final Django 1.2 release, at least one additional
preview/development releases will be made available. The current
schedule consists of at least the following:

* Week of **March 2, 2010**: First Django 1.2 release
  candidate. String freeze for translations.

* Week of **March 9, 2010**: Django 1.2 final release.

If necessary, additional beta or release-candidate packages will be
issued prior to the final 1.2 release. Django 1.2 will be released
approximately one week after the final release candidate.


What you can do to help
=======================

In order to provide a high-quality 1.2 release, we need your
help. Although this beta release is, again, *not* intended for
production use, you can help the Django team by trying out the beta
codebase in a safe test environment and reporting any bugs or issues
you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the central place to
search for open issues:

    * http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open new tickets if no existing ticket corresponds to a problem
you're running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress
toward the 1.2 release, takes place daily on the django-developers
mailing list:

    * http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

... and in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If you're
interested in helping out with Django's development, feel free to join the
discussions there.

Django's online documentation also includes pointers on how to
contribute to Django:

    * :doc:`How to contribute to Django </internals/contributing>`

Contributions on any level -- developing code, writing documentation
or simply triaging tickets and helping to test proposed bugfixes --
are always welcome and appreciated.

Development sprints for Django 1.2 will also be taking place at PyCon
US 2010, on the dedicated sprint days (February 22 through 25), and
anyone who wants to help out is welcome to join in, either in person
at PyCon or virtually in the IRC channel or on the mailing list.