As we now reached the goal of less than 100 open serious regressions against GCC 4.3, we are as of now in regression and documentation fixes only mode. This means that for patches going on the trunk the same rules as for release branches apply.
The next milestone before the release of GCC 4.3.0 is to get down the priority one (P1) regressions against GCC 4.3 down to zero. At the point we reach that goal, either by fixing all P1 bugs or by downgrading less important ones to P2, the mainline will be freezed to prepare for a release candidate. Around the same time we will branch and the opening of stage1 for GCC 4.4 development will be announced. There are 5 P1 bugs open against GCC 4.3, one of it has patches, three of them are C++ regressions assigned to Mark and one bug does not seem likely to be fixed (PR31529), which makes it a likely candidate for downgrading. I will update the GCC frontpage with the trunk state asap. Thanks, Richard.
