Going off of precedent, I think we should just go with the news item and push to current - there have been a few major-ish changes in the past that did similar things, and we don't seem to have an easy way out of this.
Can I get a consensus that posting a news item with an easy fix and pushing to current is a good idea? Dan, do you have any additional ideas (Simo had a few, I posted them in IRC last night)?
I say post a news item on date X, with links to download the pacman update, and libraries, for a manual install. Wait a few days after posting the links, and *then* push it to the repository. This will give you a chance to have a few early adopters, and also a way to get word of mouth out before hand..so if people *do* get confused on the go live date, they can a) check the new site b) hop into irc and people will likely know about it right away c) have good messaging on the forums, as well as people knowing right away. I think the key is messaging *before* the push to current. Get the word out, and then do it a few days later... preferably on a weekend so as to not impact weekday business as much as possible (and give people more time to address the odd issue that may arise).