- Patch #470210 by Johan Morahan: nice clean-up of block configuration that fixes input format issue.

- Patch #428744 by Gabor: make the main page content a real block and clean up some of the content API.

#196862 by Damien Tournoud, et al: Replace COUNT(*) queries with SELECT 1 ... LIMIT 1 queries when all that's required is a check for whether rows exist.

- Patch #424252 by swentel: move block cache settings from system module to block module now block module is optional.

#401214 by Xano: Make custom block body required so it's not possible to create blocks that don't show up.

#135976 by Dave Reid: Move Administration Theme setting to the themes page where it is findable (with tests).

- Patch #351235 by dmitrig01, webchick, frando, moshe weitzman, et al: hook_page_alter.  Oh, behave.

- Patch #244904 by edkwh, keith.smith: renamed 'input format' to 'text format' based on UMN usability study.

- Patch #331570 by recidive: rename block module tables to singular.  Requires you to run update.php.

#313213 by maartenvg, Gábor Hojtsy: Add a 'title' attribute for permissions to allow for localization of permission names

- Patch #310212 by justinrandell, catch, et all: killed  in _user hook, as well as two small kittens.

#125315 by chx, sun, Gábor Hojtsy, drumm, and friends: Add #input_format FAPI property that can be used by WYSIWYG editors. WOOHOO.

- Patch #225450 by Crell, chx, bjaspan, catch, swentel, recidive et al: next generation database layer for Drupal 7.

  et al.  Can you say 'registry'?  Drupal now maintains an internal registry of
  all functions or classes in the system, allowing it to lazy-load code files as
  needed (reducing the amount of code that must be parsed on each request). The
  list of included files is cached per menu callback for subsequent loading by
  the menu router. This way, a given page request will have all the code it needs
  but little else, minimizing time spent parsing unneeded code.

- Patch #245504 by catch, David_Rothstein, Freso, et al: removed the throttle module from Drupal core.

- Patch #245115 by kkaefer, John Morahan, JohnAlbin et al: after a long discussion we've decided to make the concatenation operator consistent with the other operators.

- Patch #232037 by pwolanin and flobruit: block_list() renders all blocks even on 404.  Refactored the code a bit so ithere is a split between loading and rendering of blocks.  By doing so, we are no longer forced to render _all_ blocks if we know they won't be shown.  There is more room for improvement here, I believe, but this is an incremental improvement.

- Patch #30984 by webchick, keith.smith, kkaefer, Crell et al: provide descriptions for permissions on the permission administration page.

#157652 by beginner, Steven Merrill and killes: block_user() had a global user object and a user parameter colliding

#211742 by theborg, chx: detect and solve the problem when blocks are assigned to invalid regions (happens in theme development)