Couldn't have said it better myself, dacapo.
The XBMC guys made it clear that 10.0-7 will be the last official for awhile, most likely until the merge happens.
For all of you that don't know, what this basically means is in order to make xbmc-ios, they have
branched the code so they can work on XBMC-IOS without affecting the normal progression of XBMC dev cycle. Now they XBMC-IOS is working good, that branch needs to be brought back to
Trunk, mainline or master, but all means the same thing. It's essentially bringing all software back under one branch, merging everything together.
(if that doesn't make sense, click on the Trunk and Branched links to read more about how this work)
So now is some of the most difficult parts because the devs need to care about how any changes they make affect other platforms and make sure everything they merge doesn't break anything, everywhere.
Keep in mind XBMC officially runs on OSX/Intel, OSX/PPC, Linux, Windows and soon to be iOS. Not counting the bits of code laying around for LiveCD, beagleboard and various other things. It's a MASSIVE undertaking and I can't think another project this open and large that does so much and has this many dependencies and hardware supported. (Besides Linux itself, but XBMC takes much longer to compile than the Linux kernel!)
Once this is done, there will be an automated buildbot to 'take over' what I've helped with. Doesn't mean all the work is done!
I'm sure everyone wants to see the XBMC-IOS branch be as stable as an xbox (well maybe not Davilla since he never used XBMC on an xbox haha) so testing will still need to be done, bugs will need squashing and like always, forum posts will be need to be answered so everyone wins.
I'm still unsure if I will be building anything during the merge really it's up to the devs if they think it's worthwhile.
I'm still in amazement how far the project has came, in less than a month! The entire port in less than 5 months! Incredible.
I may sound like a broken record since I feel like I thank the devs every other post, but I wish I could explain how incredible this is, as anyone who has had experience with software development cycles can probably attest too.
So thanks. Every person who made it happen, there's still a long ways to go, but I use it everyday and don't cuss at it nearly as much as everything else I use to display media and that makes all the difference in the world.