The new target for WordPress 3.5′s release is Monday, December 10, at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

I badly wanted to release today, just as I did yesterday, and the day before. I want this thing kicked out to the curb as much as you want it running on your sites. But the entire core team is exhausted, and we’ve made too many changes this week on too little sleep to risk dropping 3.5 without an adequate code freeze and a few days of quiet. #22803 was downright frightening to see, while #22790 was just absurd on a number of levels. I wanted to go to bed at 11 p.m. last night and instead four of us worked until 7 a.m. The responsible voice in my head says without a doubt, that code needs to soak longer (and should probably sit in a corner with a dunce hat on).

Plus, let’s face it, it’s late Friday afternoon on the east coast of the United States. I don’t want to do that to support teams, hosting companies, or translators. In the end, the extra few days can only help.

So: we’re going to branch 3.5 now. I’m currently aiming for a code freeze that lasts 65 hours and fifty-five minutes in length. We will reconvene on Monday at 10 AM Eastern time (1500 UTC) and start working our way through the release checklist.

Tomorrow evening, a few of us will touch base to see if anything has come up we need to deal with. By Sunday morning, we will know whether anything needs to change. Until then, we rest. I know, it’s lame we’re not shipping 3.5 yet. But a few more days will be forgotten sooner than potential egg on our face if we ship it without clear heads.

In the meantime: Go update your WordPress.org profile with your full name so it can make it on the credits page. And enjoy the weekend!

I’ll leave you with this: