Prep for a 1.2.4 release candidate

[dormando]

Hey,

The amount of cruft in SVN since the last release is bothering me, so 
lets push out an -rc and get some testing :)

Dustin has been managing a patch queue for interesting recent work. 
Including the CAS patches by Chris and a binary server protocol 
implementation. The "idea" (don't confuse it for a coherent plan!) is to 
merge the ascii CAS, with tests for 1.2.4, and set up a branch for the 
binary server and let it cook.

Unless someone has solid disagreement to any of this, I'll help collect 
and merge up patches, then be obnoxious about pushing an -rc or two 
before issuing a final. I'm happy with git-svn finally, so it's easy.

If you have fixes, bug reports, etc, lets hear them!

Facebook folks; we are, of course, not interested in causing a fork. If 
you have something working, by all means shove it into a branch so we 
can see!

Sun folks; Anything interesting in the pipeline?

-Dormando