December 2007 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Re: [development] Do not let postgresql hold back great patches
by Edward Z. Yang 05 Dec '07

05 Dec '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > Take, for example, that COUNT(*) is _really_ fast on MySQL + MyISAM, > but is slow on just about every other DB. So, replace it with > $db->count(), which does an SQL COUNT(*) on MySQL + MyISAM, but uses > some other technique on other databases. The programmer no longer > cares _how_ such a thing gets done, he only cares that he wants to > know how many rows are in a particular query The primary problem with this approach (at least in my experience) is that the moment you need to create queries that are even somewhat complicated the abstraction layer proves to be insufficient. Ad hoc queries are often very useful for performance reasons, but you'll have to get a PostgreSQL guru to write an equivalent. Then again, for most people writing SQL performance/complex joins/etc are not a primary concern... - -- Edward Z. Yang Portable GnuPG: 0x995A2C84 HTML Purifier <http://htmlpurifier.org> Anti-XSS Filter [[ C8D5 9E3C 15AD 1467 5561 2C0E 719A 2D9D 995A 2C84 ]] This Message Courtesy of Thunderbird Portable -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) iD8DBQFHUE9NcZotnZlaLIQRAomgAJ9JvBtXwUnv94O873gXej1pmTUVhACfSr3e q5b1On3RkByDzPboq9PM2zI= =CPMZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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how your releases interact with update_status (please read)
by Derek Wright 05 Dec '07

05 Dec '07

Thanks to GHOP[1] participant ezyang[2] and the talk I gave[3] at BADCamp[4], I'm happy to announce the creation[5] of a new must-read d.o handbook page for everyone maintaining projects on d.o: "Releases and Update Status" http://drupal.org/node/197584 It explains how update_status works, and how the choices you make as a module maintainer regarding your official releases and project node settings impact your user base by means of the update_status module (now in core for D6). Please read it! ;) Thanks, -Derek (dww) p.s. There are a handful of edge cases and limitations in the current behavior. I've posted a proposal to fix them all. Comments, input, and/or help would be most welcome: http://groups.drupal.org/node/7440 [1] http://drupal.org/node/195913 [2] http://drupal.org/user/211688 [3] http://badcamp07.org/07/sessions/how-develop-and-maintain-your- drupal-contribution [4] http://badcamp07.org [5] http://drupal.org/node/179103

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Velocity 2008
by Dries Buytaert 05 Dec '07

05 Dec '07

Might be a cool conference to present/attend: http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2008/public/cfp/9 -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/

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Mentor needed
by Bevan Rudge 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

I posted this recently on Planet Drupal via the CivicActions blog but have not had any responses yet. In summary, I need a drupal developer to help me out for a few hours per week in keeping a usability project on target. There is a small stipend from the programme. I've included an excerpt below, see http://www.civicactions.com/blog/drupal_mentor_needed_for_season_of_usabili… for details and links. Regards, Bevan Rudge/ -- Drupal.geek.nz | Gtalk bevan(a)lucion.co.nz | YIM rudgy_m_nz | .Mac/AOL b.rudge | skype b.rudge | Twitter.com/BevanR >>>>> I'm proud to announce that I'm participating in the Season of Usability programme. SoU is similar to Google's Summer of Code, but is sponsored by Open Usability and has a focus on usability, not code, in Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. The goal of my SoU project is to improve the usability of drupal. As part of the programme I need a technical mentor (a drupal developer) and a usability mentor (usability expert). Mentors help to maintain the direction of the project. Zoey and Ron, information architects at CivicActions, have offered to be the usability mentors. Now I'm seeking a technical mentor. The technical mentor will help to ensure that the results and deliverables will be valuable to the drupal community and integrated into the Drupal project. Ideally the technical mentor would be someone with a high level of respect within the Drupal community. The long term goal of this project is not just to improve usability in drupal 6 or 7, but to help build sustainable momentum in the drupal developer community that allows the community to keep drupal usable. http://www.civicactions.com/blog/drupal_mentor_needed_for_season_of_usabili…

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modules admin page still eating 1.5 times the memory?
by Gábor Hojtsy 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

Hey, scor notes at http://drupal.org/node/197720#comment-648567 that the modules page (in Drupal HEAD) still eats 1.5 times the memory when compared to the default home page. This looks quite scary, given what we would expect with all the .info file trickery, don't you think? It would also be good to invesitage what eats so much more memory in Drupal 6 compared to Drupal 5, especially that we moved a lot of code into conditionally included parts, so those should not be in memory. Others reproducing the above test (and especially more thorough experiments) would be highly appreciated. Gabor

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Re: [development] important reminder: do not use API functions inupdate code
by Karen Stevenson 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

Just to let people know, you won't be able to jump directly from CCK 4.7 to CCK 6.x, so if you use CCK you'll have to upgrade to 5.x first, anyway. Both the 4.7 to 5.x and the 5.x to 6.x upgrades involved lots of complex database manipulation, and we had also been supporting upgrades from some very old and completely different database schemas from the early versions of CCK, so getting updates that would work reliably in every situation was becoming impossible. It was taking more time to write and debug the updates than any other part of the code. I finally bit the bullet and cut out the old update code in the D6 version. I know that won't be popular, but if we're doing the same in core, at least it's consistent. And I suspect other contrib module authors would welcome a chance to cut out their old update code, so maybe other modules will require an intermediate upgrade to D5 before going to D6. Karen ----- Original Message ---- From: Michelle Cox <mcox(a)charter.net> To: development(a)drupal.org Sent: Tuesday, December 4, 2007 10:19:14 AM Subject: Re: [development] important reminder: do not use API functions inupdate code I'm one of those hoping I can take a site from 4.7 straight to 6 without having to go through 5 first. But my feeling is, if it works, great, but don't hold back progress or anything just to make it possible. If keeping the 2 version jump option is causing problems then I'll deal with having to do one version at a time. Michelle

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important reminder: do not use API functions in update code
by Gábor Hojtsy 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

Hey, As more and more schema API functionality is added to Drupal, and as more and more database changes are made in each release, it is very important for you to remenber this: **Avoid using API functions (ie. anything used in the Drupal runtime too) in your update functions** There were several instances of this before. Previous updates used node content type listing API functions, some of which were simply gone later, so no update-hopping (through multiple versions) was possible without some update code hacking. But it is just as easy to write bad code when in the same Drupal version. Take system_update_6027 for example, which we try to fix at http://drupal.org/node/197500 . - it calls _block_rehash() (note the underscore, not even a public API function!) - _block_rehash() uses drupal_save_record(), which uses the most up to date schema from system_schema() Now what happens if the schema is changed in a later update in Drupal 6? (ie. > 6027 but < 7000). Well, system_update_6027() becomes broken, because its _block_rehash() call tries to use the latest schema (as in after all Drupal 6 updates are run), but all Drupal 6 updates are not run yet. Think about this when you are doing your Drupal 6 upgrade functions for your modules. Gabor

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Re: [development] Do not let postgresql hold back great patches
by FGM 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

As I understand it, variant_date_from_timestamp is a Windows-only function, so this wouldn't probably cut it, would it ? ---- Original Message ---- From: earnie(a)users.sourceforge.net To: development(a)drupal.org Subject: Re: [development] Do not let postgresql hold back great patches Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:52:09 -0500 [...] >DB engine to do TRT with it? Then we can use PHP5 functions >variant_date_from_timestamp and variant_date_to_timestamp to convert >it. [...]

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Media library using Drupal
by Cofundos.org 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

Hi all, The following drupal related project was created on Cofundos.org (a platform for describing open-source project ideas and pooling resources for their implementation): *Media library using Drupal* by david Tags: Facet-based_browsing drupal media library faceted-search http://Cofundos.org/project.php?id=14 Project description: Drupal module/package selection/adaptation for maintaining a (shared) media library of e.g. books and films one owns, knows, has read or watched, likes to read or watch. Insertion of new media should be possible via metadata-lookup e.g. via Amazon and IMDB. Users shall be able to restrict displayed media by various attributes (e.g. only one own's media). Navigation along various attributes (e.g. authors, year, actors, directors, language) and as faceted search. Private and public comments and ratings for each medium, e.g. to denote where a medium resides physically in one's library. http://drupal.org Suggested modules include http://drupal.org/project/faceted_search, http://drupal.org/project/cck, http://drupal.org/project/amazontools (?) Adapt imdb parser from http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/3299.html More info at: http://Cofundos.org/project.php?id=14 You can support this project by commenting it or bidding for its impementation! -- 241 Cofundos users were placing 133 bids (amounting Euro 6185) on 67 projects. *Please help making open-source even more successful* Spread the word about http://Cofundos.org

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Re: [development] Requesting namespace reservation
by Michelle Cox 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

On 12/4/2007 10:19:19 AM, Gábor Hojtsy (gabor(a)hojtsy.hu) wrote: > It would be a good idea to differentiate your module from the CCK > based user profile node modules. My module is a glue module. It currently uses nodeprofile but I'm looking at making it more flexible so it works with bio as well. Those are the only two I know of other than core profile, which doesn't use nodes, and so doesn't work for this. Michelle

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