Re: Getting ready for beta -- more work needed

Folks,

Where will the beta downloads live? I don't know where to link to.

We also need text for:

http://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta

Here's my suggestion:

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today released the long-awaited
first beta of version 8.3. Thanks to an unprecedented number of new
patches, this version introduces more new and improved features than any
previous one. Of course, more new features means that 8.3 needs more
user testing than any previous version, so we're counting on you to
download it and test it with development versions of your applications.

The current beta is 8.3Beta1, which is available <a href="link?">from
the file browser.</a> <a
href="/docs/8.3/interactive/release-8-3.html>Documentation is available
online</a> as well.

Among the features in the new version are:
<ul><li>Greatly improved performance consistency, through HOT, Load
Distributed Checkpoint, JIT bgwriter, Asynchronous Commit, and other
features.</li>
<li>TSearch2 full text search integrated into the core code with
improved syntax and ease of adding custom dictionaries.</li>
<li>SQL:XML syntax.</li>
<li>Logging to database-loadable CSV files.</li>
<li>Automated rebuilding of cached plans.</li>
<li>ENUMs, UUIDs and arrays of complex types.</li>
<li>GSSAPI and SSPI authentication support.</li></ul>
... and many others. <a
href="/docs/8.3/interactive/release-8-3.html>See the release notes</a>
for a more complete list of new features.

How soon this beta turns into a release depends on testing by our
community of users. As soon as possible, please help us with community
testing:

<ul><li>Test installing & configuring the new version.</li>
<li>Try out the new features, alone or in combination.</li>
<li>Test porting your old applications.</li>
<li>Test integration with drivers and other database tools.</li>
<li>Run performance tests on the new database.</li>
<li>If you are a Windows developer, try compiling using our <i>new</i>
Visual C++ support.</li></ul>

As always, please send any of the bugs you find using the <a
href="/support/submitbug">bug submission form.</a> Your help with
testing will ensure that this version of PostgreSQL is as secure,
reliable and bug-free as previous versions -- and get the beta over with
quickly!