GNOME 2.7.4 Development Release has been released:

Here's the latest set of tarballs for the GNOME 2.7 development branch. We have now entered our API/ABI, Feature and Module freezes, with our modules decision to be finalised next week. The biggest change in this release is the new MIME system, masterfully wrangled by Jonathan Blandford, Dave Camp and Ray Strode. Please read the extra notes regarding this change below...

platform: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/platform/2.7/2.7.4/NEWS
tar.gz: 44M total
tar.bz2: 31M total

desktop: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.7/2.7.4/NEWS
tar.gz: 142M total
tar.bz2: 102M total

bindings: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/bindings/2.7/2.7.4/NEWS
tar.gz: 13M total
tar.bz2: 8.1M total

Notes about the new MIME system
-------------------------------

With GNOME 2.7.4, we have rewritten the old MIME system and replaced it with the current shared specification found on freedesktop.org. We expect things to be somewhat buggy with the initial release, but are working quickly to improve matters. There are a couple comments to go along with this release:

* In order the to see any applications available, they must be registered with the MIME system. This can be done by getting the latest verion of desktop-file-utils and running:

update-desktop-database $PREFIX/applications

jhbuild in CVS has been modified to build this, and we expect applications to do this on install automatically in the future. Additionally, not every application used the new system as released. This will also be fixed over the next week.

* The new user interface is modeled after the proposal at:

http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/

Work on it isn't complete yet, but it's progressing well. Also, the old File Types capplet has been removed in favor of a nautilus-only interface.

* Monitoring of MIME changes doesn't fully work yet. Changes won't be noticed until you hit reload in nautilus.


WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
--------------------------

This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes. Like the Linux kernel, GNOME uses odd minor version numbers to indicate development status. Please check the 2.7 start page for more information:

http://www.gnome.org/start/2.7/


Happy testing!

- The GNOME Release Team