Hopefully the last push-out of the year

By now I know a bit better than taking the lack of serious regression reports during the holiday weekend as a sign of perfection of the upcoming release, but I will tag 1.7.9-rc0 soonish anyway. As far as I can see, the tip of 'master' branch is now feature complete for 1.7.9, modulo possible bugs and regressions, of course.

We've done quite a lot during this short cycle leading to 1.7.9 and hopefully we can use the next few weeks squashing any regressions, preparing for a solid release by the end of January 2012 (Knock wood...).

A big Thank-you for all the contributors and testers.