Need some quick advice on 6.x panels

So first off, I can't commit to a clear answer on this because it just wouldn't be fair (to me or the community). And I CANNOT recommend the use of alpha1 in a production site. Keep in mind that for _most_ things the alpha release is actually quite stable. I personally was expecting a deluge of issues after releasing alpha1, but we only got a few - and given the number of people who were waiting, that's an indicator that the release is pretty solid.

What I CAN say, though, is that the things remaining for me/Earl to do are actually fairly few before the D6 branch is as stable as the D5 branch. Those things are:

1. Update contexts and arguments for consistency and to ensure they're behaving properly.
2. Step through the panels_page master loader system (the thing that handles all path overrides at runtime) one last time to ensure it's loading contexts properly.
3. Iron out the bugs that people have posted to the queue (there aren't many, but I also don't expect there to be many more that are D6-unique)

Those are things liable to affect you regardless of what you need with Panels. There are also a few things that are still just plain todos:

1. Reimplement admin previews of panel_pages.
2. Fix the on-view admin tabs for panel nodes and panel pages.
3. Context plugins for forms are virtually unported at the moment, and need fairly considerable revisiting.

But that's about it. I was hoping to make it through most of the things in the first list this weekend, but I got diverted by working on Panels benchmarks, so I ended up basically just queue-cleaning. Earl and I have agreed that we really need to push out the next release of Panels for D6 (alpha2, or if we cross off enough things on those lists, beta1), and to move D5 towards an actual release. So expect the next release (for both versions) very soon - within the next week or two.

IMO you can start builidng your site, but there are definite hiccups. YOur ability to actually build your site is going to depend on your patience with us; we're having trouble coming up with enough time to really address the bugs in a timely manner.

dude, considering the massive progress you just made on views you oughta take a vacation!!

...of course, now that views has hit a stable milestone, i suspect that volume of d6 installs and migrations will start to accelerate, leading many folks back to the panels module!

in the interim, there's an interesting composite layout module which is kind of like a *very* simple 'per node' panel management tool and folks may find it useful for simply customizations (not by content type, but literlaly per node - as in, custom front page configuration or whatever) but it is NOT panels by any stretch of the imagination...

Agreed - I'm probably typical, in that I had left Panels until the last possible moment in my shiny new D6 site since it's layout and not site structure or design. Now, however, you want bug reports, I give you bug reports =)

hmm, i see activity buzzing over views bonus pack, which makes extensive use of panels - a 6x.dev release just rolled out today...wondering if there's an update coming for panels - or alternatively, if folks are interested in testing out, would the dev suggest (on *non production* sites), using the dev release to test and report back bugs etc?