I'm thinking more in terms of alpha, not the beta or final release form anticipated by the original seat-of-the-pants schedule put together by Ben. I do think that "many packages available in beta" will be true by August 31, but probably not "many packages available in final release". Will depend in part on how long we choose to beta test, and how stringent we are in our definition of "final release" (more stringent than aD has been in the past, if I get my way).
But given that the core's taking longer than first expected I guess we're doing OK. The key is that the core pieces needed for basic package porting has been done for quite some time so package porting hasn't had to wait even though there's still work to be done on the core.
And we've had a higher degree of parallel development than I, at least, had first planned on. In other words, more volunteers stepped to the plate than expected. Hooray!
But keep in mind that some of these ports are going to need improvement, if nothing else because they're based on ACS 4.x Classic packages that need improvement, in some cases to work with core changes that are being made or discussed in order to get some of the unfinished pieces working in PG. Sitewide search, that must at minimum provide an API that can be used for both InterMedia and our PG full-text search solution, will undergo changes that will impact client packages.
Paying the price of clean, multi-db support, in other words ...
Still, I think things are really going quite well.
