Sphinx 0.9.7 RC2 is now available in Downloads section.

Major new features include:

• extended query mode with boolean, field limits, phrases, and proximity support (eg.: @title "hello world"~10 | @body example program);
• extended sorting mode (eg.: @weight DESC @id ASC);
• combined phrase+statistical ranking which takes words frequencies into account (currently in extended mode only),
• official Python API;
• contributed Perl and Ruby APIs.

Most of those had already been tested in production by some early adopters - thanks for all the support guys!

Also the SE has been updated to support MySQL 5.0.27 and 5.1.14 out of the box.

Seems that it's a little unfair to call this RC2; but as long as documentation and MySQL SE are still not up-to-date (work on SE is in progress right now), something deep inside prevents me from dubbing it “release”.

Am I reinventing Google Beta or something...