diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index dcd81f56d..a720b5962 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -43,3 +43,4 @@ Christopher Gilling
 Daniel Grana
 Andy Freeland
 Trevor Bekolay
+David Mohr
diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index 102edfbf9..954de32ab 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,4 +1,13 @@
-NEXT (2.6)
+NEXT
+-----------------------------------
+
+- address issue170: allow pytest.mark.xfail(...) to specify expected exceptions via
+  an optional "raises=EXC" argument where EXC can be a single exception
+  or a tuple of exception classes.  Thanks David Mohr for the complete
+  PR.
+
+
+2.6
 -----------------------------------
 
 - Cache exceptions from fixtures according to their scope (issue 467).
diff --git a/_pytest/__init__.py b/_pytest/__init__.py
index b70449718..f8d003fcf 100644
--- a/_pytest/__init__.py
+++ b/_pytest/__init__.py
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
 #
-__version__ = '2.6.0'
+__version__ = '2.6.1.dev1'
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index fac804aa9..e3ad2ad15 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ def main():
         name='pytest',
         description='pytest: simple powerful testing with Python',
         long_description=long_description,
-        version='2.6.0',
+        version='2.6.1.dev1',
         url='http://pytest.org',
         license='MIT license',
         platforms=['unix', 'linux', 'osx', 'cygwin', 'win32'],