diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 76f3158a5..8941400fc 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-1.9.0 - 2017-??-??
+1.9.0 - 2017-10-06
   - General changes/additions
     * several improvements to the error messages when transforming a tree
       back to text fails. They now make it clearer what part of the tree
@@ -7,29 +7,51 @@
     * Fix handling of backslash-escaping in strings and regular expressions
       in the lens language. We used to handle constructs like "\\" and
       /\\\\/ incorrectly. (Issue #495)
+    * do not unescape the default value of a del on create; otherwise we are
+      double unescaping these strings (Issue #507)
+    * remove tempfile when saving files because destination is not writable
+      (Issue #479)
+    * span information is now updated on save (Issue #467)
+    * fix lots of warnings generated by gcc 7.1
+    * Various changes to reduce bashisms in tests and make them run on
+      FreeBSD (Romain Tartière)
+    * Fix building on Solaris (Shawn Ferry)
   - API changes
     * add function aug_ns_attr to allow iterating through a nodeset
       quickly. See examples/dump.c for an example of how to use them
       instead of aug_get, aug_label etc. and for a way to measure
       performance gains.
-    * do not unescape the default value of a del on create; otherwise we are
-      double unescaping these strings (Issue #507)
   - Lens changes/additions
     * Ceph: new lens for /etc/ceph/ceph.conf
+    * Cgconfig: accept fperm & dperm in admin & task (Pino Toscano)
+    * Dovecot: also load files from /usr/local/etc (Roy Hubbard)
     * Exports: relax the rules for the path at the beginning of a line so
       that double-quoted paths are legal, too
+    * Getcap: new lens to parse generic termcap-style capability databases
+      (Matt Dainty)
+    * Grub: accept toplevel 'boot' entry (Pino Toscano)
     * Httpd: handle empty comments with a continuation line (Issue #423);
       handle '>""' in a directive properly (Issue #429); make space between
       quoted arguments optional (Issue #435); accept quoted strings as part
       of bare arguments (Issue #470)
+    * Nginx: load files from sites-available directory (Omer Katz) (Issue #471)
+    * Nslcd: new lens for nss-pam-ldapd config (Jose Plana)
     * Oz: New lense for /etc/oz/oz.cnf
+    * postfix lenses: also load files from /usr/local/etc (Roy Hubbard)
     * Properties: accept DOS line endings (Issue #468)
-    * Rsyslog: allow spaces before the # starting a comment; allow comments
-      inside config statements like 'module'
+    * Rtadvd: new lens to parse the rtadvd configuration file (Matt Dainty)
+    * Rsyslog: load files from /etc/rsyslog.d (Doug Wilson) (Issue #475);
+      allow spaces before the # starting a comment; allow comments inside
+      config statements like 'module'
+    * Shellvars: load FreeBSD's /etc/rc.conf.d (Roy Hubbard)
     * Ssh: accept '=' to separate keyword from arguments
     * Sshd: split HostKeyAlgorithms into list of values; recognize quoted
       group names with spaces in them (Issue #477)
+    * Sudoers: recognize "match_group_by_gid" (Luigi Toscano) (Issue #482)
     * Syslog: allow spaces before the # starting a comment
+    * Termcap: new lens to parse termcap capability databases (Matt Dainty)
+    * Vsftpd: accept seccomp_sandbox (Denys Stroebel)
+    * Xymon: accept 'group-sorted' directive (Issue #462)
 
 1.8.1 - 2017-08-17
   - General changes/addition
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index f3d8331e2..807957479 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-AC_INIT(augeas, 1.8.0)
+AC_INIT(augeas, 1.9.0)
 AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([src/augeas.c])
 AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([build/ac-aux])
 AM_CONFIG_HEADER([config.h])
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ fi
 
 dnl Version info in libtool's notation
 AC_SUBST([LIBAUGEAS_VERSION_INFO], [23:0:23])
-AC_SUBST([LIBFA_VERSION_INFO], [5:4:4])
+AC_SUBST([LIBFA_VERSION_INFO], [5:5:4])
 
 AC_GNU_SOURCE