[$] The first part of the 6.14 merge window

As of this writing, just over 4,300 non-merge changesets have been pulledinto the mainline repository for the 6.14 release. Many of the pullrequests this time around include remarks saying that activity has beenrelatively low this time around, presumably due to the holidays. So those4,300 changesets are probably closer to the merge-window halfway point thanusual. Much of the work merged thus far looks more like incrementalimprovements than major new initiatives, but there still have been a numberof interesting changes in the mix.