When is Magento CE 1.9.2 going to be released?
Magento CE 1.9.2 has been released
Update: Today 7th of July, 2015 Magento CE 1.9.2 has been released: https://www.magentocommerce.com/download
Magento Community Edition 1.9.2 includes SUPEE-5344, SUPEE-5994, and the also today released SUPEE-6285 patch.
History:
FIRST ANSWER (May 8):
I have contacted Magento through the Partner Portal support panel (thanks for the hint!) and I have received an answer. It is clear, but not exact and not satisfying ;)
Here's some quotations from in between the formal and slick support style answer.
Magento's response:
"there's no definite date yet for the release of Magento Community 1.9.2"
And:
"[The] response from the Product Manager regarding the possible release date":
"they are still discussing options for the date but June is the soonest possible release month since there are still some security fixes and performance improvements they need to implement. It is still not definite and it might still change"
So in short:
"it [the release] is still being a few months off"
UPDATE (May 19):
"The Product Manager [said that the] target for the release date is end of May or early June. They had to push the security updates [SUPEE-5994 patch] first as this was more critical."
UPDATE (June 8):
"[...] due to the recent security issue, the tentative expected date was moved to July around the 9th"
Security fixes
In my own activity here on Magento SE and in my search for an answer, I stumbled upon this question "Shoplift vulnerability if admin panel is hidden? " which's answers refer to a MageHero blog post about renaming the Magento admin URL. In the comments on the post, different persons are referring to the fact that the admin URL, although changed, can still be discovered in multiple ways. Ben Marks responds on May 4th "This issue is currently being patched."
Probably this is one thing they want to have fixed before releasing anything and that it is one of the issues that has pushed the release from "in the next few weeks" to "a few months"
UPDATE (May 15): The patch SUPEE-5994 was released. These are a bunch of security fixes that will be already included in Magento CE 1.9.2.
UPDATE (July 7): Magento CE 1.9.2 has finally been released and along side of it a security patch SUPEE-6285 was released. This patch is already included in Magento CE 1.9.2.
Its impossible to give an exact date. Usually it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to months. EE is top priority for updates so they usually come first. CE on the other hand, we will not know for sure.
I can say this though. If you are working with EE clients, then you should have access to open a support ticket via the partner portal. Ask them the question there and you should get a response and definite answer from your region rep or someone in the core team.
The usual answer in Software Developing and also a lot of other fields: "When its Done"
There is a lot of quality assurance connected with a release, to avoid another patch release during the next days. The problem is, if there is a blocking issue detected, it goes back to developing, and then the QA needs at least partially get repeated, which can depending on other important tasks move a release more then a week.
With an RC release, or even a 1.y.0 release there is some free space for bugs, but with every bugfix release, the acceptance of new bugs lowers, making the QA more important and the release date less predictable.
There may be a Roadmap, but its not an official one. And directly install a patch on the first day it got releases is sometimes tricky, why a lot of developers tend to wait a week and hear if others have problems with special edge cases.
If you are searching for an official answer, you should contact Magento or one of the Community Managers directly.