Thank you Martin.
Just to make sure I understand correctly: before October 27 we should get our old code sorted, but we should wait with committing any code that works only with Moodle 1.7 until after October 27. On October 27 you will create branches for Moodle 1.5 and 1.6 and 1.7. The HEAD branch will be for 1.8. Is that correct?