Hi, we already have quite a few issues resolved in Jackrabbit trunk since the 2.8.0 release back in May. Some of them are improvements and API enhancement, which we also use in Oak. To ease further development and provide an unstable release to the community, I will cut a 2.9.0 in the next few days.
Right now there aren't any unresolved issues tagged for 2.9. Please set the fix version accordingly if you would like to include changes/fixes in this release. Regards Marcel