Thanks for the update.
Can we assume that snapshot builds will normally continue to work during this reintegration work, or should we stay away from the snapshot builds until further notice?
I wanted to update to get the latest ZWave Binding updated.
As usual, snapshots keep breaking from time to time and everybody will do their best to fix it again. With the ESH integration changes, the likelihood for breaking the distro might be a bit higher than usual - the good news is that the major issues (missing icons, not able to install UIs) should be fixed with the latest build again.
Aaaaaaand the docker image got built again. I was slightly scared something has been terribly broken as the last build was from 23. January 
so safe to use snapshot images again?
It’s never safe to use snapshots. I also see people on the forum recommend these snapshot builds to others without any warning whatsoever. Not everyone is familiar with the terminology of Snapshot and Milestone builds.
Of course every developer does his utmost not to break anything, but Snapshot builds are there to test if indeed nothing broke.
If you want to be safe, then stay on the official stable releases.
Actually that depends on your needs. There were a lot of bug fixes recently for all bindings maintained by me which include the network binding, the hue emulation service and the mqtt binding. The “stable” 2.4 release will cause more issues than the milestone 2.5 build.
I think the majority of people will update their entire openHAB baseline to either a Snapshot or a Milestone release instead of just cherry picking the updated bindings that solve the issue they are experiencing. By doing so they take in many more changes than necessary. Changes that are not as thoroughly tested as the stable releases.
I would welcome a quicker release cycle, but I also understand that that comes with more overhead for the maintainers. The current setup with Snapshot, Milestone, and Stable builds is already a big improvement in my opinion.
Now I am slightly confused.
Is the Milestone image ok , at least with the UI issues that were in the recent snapshots?
The milestone release was build before the big merge started.
Yeah, sometimes I think about what might be a good moment for a milestone release 
.
3 months before the official release 
You have no idea how grateful I am that you did. It has been a life saver helping users, particularly those with MQTT 2.4 problems that were fixed almost immediately after MQTT 2.4 was released.
the good news is that the major issues (missing icons, not able to install UIs) should be fixed with the latest build again.
Maybe time for another milestone release?
And association fixes in zwave.
Sorry for hijacking… when was that fix? 
Have quite big issues with associations and esp. differently behaving lifeline Association After every Single Restart of openhab or the Zwave bundle.
@kai, I see org.openhab.core.automation. Is it too soon to submit a PR, or should I wait? I have scripted actions working for Jython and Groovy, and a couple fixes.
The merge is completed. You can issue PRs again, I guess. The build process is just not documented yet. It has changed from maven/eclipse-tycho to maven/bnd and it will feel a little (or completely) different in your Java IDE.
I want to applaud all of the outstanding effort that you guys have been putting into reintegrating ESH! It’s hard to keep up with all of the PRs… and that’s just openhab-core! Thank you! 
Most kudos have to go to @maggu2810 who is doing the major work on openhab-core right now - while I am struggling to get the openhab-addons build to work again 
… I’m far behind my plan, but hope to have a breakthrough soon, so that we can continue with nice new snapshot builds asap!