Don't see the problem here - i get the desired panel placement both in my current startup.blend and when using factory defaults.

Well, at least in the Windows 64-bit build of the 2.72 release, the Freestyle tabs in the properties window are not placed as requested in this task, when the factory settings are used and the rendering engine is set to Cycles. I guess I should have assigned the task to @Thomas Dinges (dingto) or @Campbell Barton (campbellbarton) for sure to get it addressed before the release...

I do can confirm the "issue" with Cycles engine, but not sure we consider this a bug? Thing is, Cycles being an addon, it's UI is loaded after 'main' UI, can't do much about it… You can even see, in Material buttons e.g., that the 'Custom Data' panel, which is supposed to be the last one, is in first position :/

Imho until we have a real way to define panels' positions in our UI code, this remains a known TODO?

It would be ideal to have a systematic way to define the positions of panels, but this specific task was not meant to request such a solution. Instead I was proposing manual updates of startup.blend to refine panel positions for the 2.72 release. The addition of new panels does not happen so often, and fixes are necessary only for some of the panel positions that appears inappropriate. Manual fixes would be easier for the time being.

@Bastien Montagne (mont29): Yes I guess it's a todo, but one that has been pushed for quite too long. Having this Custom Data panel before Cycles panels is just one example of how bad the current solution is. :/

Doesn't work for me.

I switched to the branch (splash screen confirms it), and I made sure to load the factor default (File menu).
The Freestyle panel order is as before in Cycles. For BI, it's now on the bottom, the concern was specifically about Cycles though.

It turns out panels read from in-memory startup.blend git their positions reset,
rB3af90151399fb0ce011c42a531cf3ca8eb437e6a

https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/source/blender/blenloader/intern/versioning_defaults.c$123

Options are:

• Change definition order in code
• Revert rB3af90151399fb0ce011c42a531cf3ca8eb437e6a and use panels from startup file.
• Leave as-is

Edit, think its best to change this in the Python scripts class registration

Also think it's better to change from python. It can be confusing to see that panels are ordered differently in the GUI as defined through the python scripts, especially for newer devs.
Better to do it always like this IMHO.

@Campbell Barton (campbellbarton), is it something to be addressed for 2.73 still?

No, this is general since it requires code changes.

Issue is panel definition order.

This seems to be fixed? Checked recent build, resetting factory settings.

Checked to fix this... and seems its fixed in master?

Can someone else check this?

When the rendering engine is set to Cycles,

• in the Render properties window, the Freestyle panel comes between the Output and Sampling panels. The Freestyle panel is closed (folded) by default.
• in the Render Layers properties window, the Freestyle, Freestyle Line Set, and Freestyle Line Style panels comes in this order on top of the Layer panel. Only the last panel is closed by default, and the other two are open.
• in the Material properties window, the Freestyle Line panel comes between the Custom Properties and Preview panels. The Freestyle Line panel is closed by default.

So the positioning needs to be fixed (preferably as highlighted in the task description in the very beginning).

It is also remarked that Freestyle is an opt-in post-processing tool enabled by the user. For this reason, IMHO the Freestyle-related panels should be open/closed by default as follows:

• in the Render properties window, the Freestyle panel should be closed (as it is now).
• in the Render Layers properties window, all the 3 Freestyle-related panels should be open.
• in the Material properties window, the Freestyle Line panel should be open.