[consulting] Staying Current

[Luigi Bai]

I feel that one of the frustrations here is not that the "Drupal community" 
will only support two versions, but that in effect each version is a 
different product; the policy of not being backward compatible between core 
releases is a problem for big sites. 

When we started our development effort in fall 2007, D6 was well underway and 
soon to be released, but contrib modules were not going to supported for it 
for an unknowable time into the future. The decision we made was to stay with 
D5 (which was stable), and write the fairly extensive modules and themes we 
needed against core and as few additional modules as possible. That meant no 
Views, Panels, CCK, etc. When those modules were finally up to speed for D6, 
D7 was already underway, and we could see that same problem would come up. 
Our approach would make it possible to jump right to D7 from D5, having saved 
ourselves a lot of headache trying to deal with D6. 

Before going to D7, we would appreciate the generosity of OpenFlows making 
backports available; to the extent we can, we'd do the same for the modules 
we use which are not backported by them. That is if we don't, as Laura said, 
replace Leatherman modules with custom screwdriver code.

So, I'd say that as Drupal becomes more popular and more widely used, there is 
more of a need to maintain back versions, especially of modules. As Karen has 
pointed out, primary contributors can only reasonably write code for a subset 
of the possible combinations of <PHP, Drupal> versions. I believe it really 
is incumbent on the wider community to fill in the gaps. Perhaps Acquia would 
consider adding that as a standard function it performs for the community, 
funded by customers who will benefit greatly by having it happen.

Luigi

On Sunday, 29 March 2009, Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg wrote:
> Sorry if I came across as harsh, but I don't think this is a philosophical
> argument. The Drupal community supports 2 versions. That is the current
> fact. I am not saying that people who want to support Drupal 5 sites are
> used car salesmen, but rather that there are certainly unscrupulous
> salesman, as well as people who (even with the best of intentions) mislead
> their clients into maintaining unreasonable expectations for what can be
> expected at a certain cost.
>