German online banking users asking for 2.5.x very soon

[Christian Stimming]

Dear all,

the German online banking (HBCI) users are facing a major version  
upgrade in many online banking servers, which requires an update on  
the client side as well (i.e. an updated libaqbanking). However, our  
gnucash 2.4 branch and in particular its Windows build is locked on  
some older aqbanking version due to its older gtk version setup. In  
order to continue online banking support, those users need either a  
2.4.x windows build with newer gtk (>= 2.20), or we need to branch off  
  a new stable series 2.5.x/2.6.x rather soon.

As 2.4.0 is now 12 months old, I'd rather prefer to have a new stable  
branch started very soon. There is some ongoing work on trunk, but  
this isn't a problem: New testing code is orthogonal to a new release,  
and new features which happen to be not yet stable can still be  
disabled in the stable branch.

It is not a solution to point those users to trunk versions,  
especially due to the incomplete translations in trunk. Hence, if we  
think we can call trunk "stable enough", we consequently should branch  
off a new stable branch from the current status.

And indeed I believe current trunk to be rather stable in terms of the  
code base. There haven't been any newly discovered serious errors in  
the main code for quite some time. We should make good use of this  
stability, branch off a new stable branch so that it can get  
translated, and continue the main development on a new trunk rather  
soon.

Potential timeline:
  - 2.5.0 unstable release within the next 1-2 weeks (e.g. Sunday  
11th) with a call for translation
  - Additional 2.5.x unstable releases every two weeks
  - Branch off a 2.6 branch at release 2.5.2 or 2.5.3 so that trunk is  
allowed to be unstable again
  - Add another 2.5.x unstable releases
  - Have 2.6.0 in February or March

Major new user-visible features:
- Windows: Using new gtk version
- Updated online banking for German banks (HBCI)
- Very large number of bugfixes
- Customer / Vendor overview pages
- Customer overview reports
- ... please insert your favorite new feature here

What do you think?

Regards,

Christian