This morning I had the pleasure of running our `build_release` script for the first time, and am proud to announce the availability of the first cut of the much-anticipated 1.2.0 release. Secretly, I tried to do it on a holiday (yesterday), but had to nurse the script a little due to internal ops changes regarding svn locations.

So without further ado, I give you:

Dojo 1.2.0 beta1

Please, everyone grab a copy, drop it in your existing apps and do some serious regression testing. Some things have changed, though we strive for backwards compatibility, so if you hit any bumps by just dropping it in, please let us know. Catching any potential mishaps before shipping the final 1.2 is important, and your assistance here is invaluable.

There has been quite a bit deprecated in this cycle, so you'll see a lot of those warning messages if you are using a lot of Dijit functionality. Most, if not all, of the deprecation warnings stem from the addition of dijit._Widget.attr(), the new (much cleaner and sane) way of setting attributes on your dijits.

For the full rundown on what is new and exciting, and notes on potential migration issues, visit the 1.2 Release Notes on this site.

Some changes happened regarding which download to choose, though they are mostly trivial. Here is the rundown:

• dojo-release-1.2.0b.tar.gz is smaller than before. It is a "mini" build Dojo, free of tests and demos. It is everything you need to play with Dojo, though is not meant as a development tool. It is simply a minimal version of Dojo components, optimized out of the box as much as humanly possible. There are no .uncompressed.js files either. This file is ideal for deployment, embedding, or otherwise shipping Dojo along with your own project (unless you are doing a custom build, as the util/ folder is absent)
• dojo-release-1.2.0b1-src.tar.gz has grown in size, but only due to the addition of several great components in DojoX. This is the full source checkout including the utils/ folder which is required for building your own Dojo layers and unit testing.
• dojo-release-1.2.0b1-demos.tar.gz is a collection of demos in un-built form, meant to live side-by-side your dojo/ dijit/ and dojox/ folders. They are there as a learning tool mostly, and made available as a separate download to avoid the additional size in the -src release. The demos are not shipped with the releases so we can use server side code as examples as well as content licensed outside of our dual AFL/BSD-ness. This package includes the full code for the moj.oe demo, skewDemo, and several others. If you have a high-quality demo and would like to include it here, do the CLA-thing, and submit the files to trac.

After a couple weeks of rigorous testing, we'll release the 'official' 1.2 downloads, and start 1.3 development. We already have some great new functionality on deck, which will appear shortly after 1.2 to allow for rigorous testing and documentation additions on new features, so be on the lookout.

Thanks to everyone involved in bringing this next iteration/generation of the Dojo Toolkit to such a level of stability, and a preemptive "Thanks" to everyone for doing some hard-core-beta-testing! Here's the the best Dojo yet! (Salud!)