[IPT] IPT 2.0RC3 available for download

[Tim Robertson (GBIF)]

Dear all,

The IPT development team are happy to announce that the IPT 2.0  
release candidate 3 (IPT 2.0RC3) is now available for download and  
testing from
http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/downloads/list

Thank you once again to everyone who has reported bugs and proposed  
enhancements during the testing phase.  Since the IPT 2.0RC2 was  
released some further 36 issues have been reported and addressed (http://tinyurl.com/2dev7uu 
), with a total of 159 issues now fixed since testing commenced – well  
done to everyone involved!

As we are approaching the 2.0 General Availability release, RC3 allows  
users to configure the IPT to register against the GBIF live registry  
and register and publish data to the GBIF network.  On a new  
installation, after the data directory is selected, you may choose  
“production use”, which will ensure the IPT communicates with the LIVE  
GBIF registry.  Once selected, this cannot be altered so please be  
vigilant in your selection.  If your intention is to test and  
evaluate, please do not select production installation.

The expectation is that the 2.0 General Availability release (2.0GA)  
will be offered in week 3, 2011, but this will not be done without the  
agreement from the testing community.  During that week, we will call  
a vote on the mailing list, to ask if anyone believes the IPT is not  
yet ready to use for publishing data through GBIF so please consider  
this during your testing.  Following 2.0GA we will continue to provide  
corrective fixes, and will initiate discussions on the future  
direction and functionality of the product.

The IPT roadmap planning is primarily based on the issues reported on http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/issues/list

Thank you once again for all your contributions and we welcome all  
suggestions on how we can improve the process.

Kind regards,

Tim, on behalf of the IPT development team