Status of the release

[Puja Valiyil]

Hey Aaron and Caleb,
I saw that there was a release branch.  Should we hold off on merging
things into develop while you are working on the release?  I had put off
merging pull requests while you guys were actively working so that it
wouldn't be adding work, but there are a lot of requests at this point that
should be pulled in.  Let me know if its ok to start pulling stuff in or if
that will just add more work to what you all are currently doing.
Thanks,
Puja