February 2007 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Re: [development] CVS branch work best practices?
by Derek Wright 26 Feb '07

26 Feb '07

sorry for the delayed reply to this thread -- i just got back from vacation and have started reading through the backlog... i'll respond directly to a few key points here, and start new threads for a few others. A) the answers to Ber's original questions can be found here: http://drupal.org/node/17570#HEAD i laid out the 2 basic scenarios for how to use HEAD, when you'd create branches, and where you'd apply patches. that's been there since the night the release system went live. it's worth re-reading in light of this thread. no, you don't *have* to make a DRUPAL-5--2 branch to add new features to your 5.x-* version of your module. read what i wrote, and follow the first scenario i outline [1]. these 2 scenarios don't quite match the 2 laid out by Dries here: http://lists.drupal.org/archives/development/2007-02/msg00082.html some of the other debates in this thread came from misunderstandings coming from the difference between what Dries wrote in that email, and what's in the handbook. that handbook page is *really* important for developers to read and understand, so any comments on how to make it more clear would be greatly welcomed. B) why this is so complicated... - Drupal contrib development is nearly worst-case for revision control complexity: -- core's API changes (usually radically) at least twice per year. -- people actually *using* drupal try to rely on various older (stable) versions of core for at least a whole year, sometimes longer. -- nearly every site depends on at least a few (if not dozens of) contrib modules. -- real sites often want new functionality in contrib for older (stable) versions of core. -- contrib is full of bugs and security holes (like every other piece of software on earth), and those are actively being uncovered and fixed by a very clueful, responsive, and dedicated security team (unlike most pieces of software). -- many modules depend on other modules. (i didn't invent any of this when i designed the new release system. those are just the facts i found myself confronting when trying to do contrib development for a real site that needed new functionality not found in the existing modules. the release system doesn't create this complexity, but it partly reflects it. yes, complexity can be a disease, but nature is complicated. again, einstein: "everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler".) - many (most?) Drupal developers have little or no experience with revision control, release management, etc. some (many?) don't even understand basic revision control concepts like branching and tagging, let alone advanced operations of the specific tool we're using. - we make a virtue out of flexibility and distributed decision making. every maintainer is basically free to do whatever they want regarding their own revision control activities. this makes perfect sense given a huge, distributed, volunteer development community, but it adds another layer of complexity to the overall picture. we can document best practices all we want (and i've done lots of that), but in the end, it's all a gamble as to how responsible and consistent the maintainers are being for the modules you actually care about... there's a limit to how much the system can force the maintainers to do. - we had a long period where none of these problems were confronted, so there are a lot of accumulated practices, expectations, and (frankly) superstitions that have been built up over the years. in order to get the new release system accepted and installed at all, i had to maintain certain links to the past that, if we were starting clean, i would have removed [2]. these compromises for "backwards compatibility" (a little ironic, given the usual "the drop is always moving" mentality), make a few things about the release system (in particular, the fate of the contrib branches that have the same names as core branches, like DRUPAL-5, etc) a little more confusing than they need to be. - every contrib module has a different audience/community of users, and how much effort you need to put into the release/branch management depends on the maturity of the module and the size of the user base. new modules with few or no users don't need to be as thoughtful as well-established modules that 1000s of sites depend on. in general, i document best practices for the safe, mature, cautious approach, but for lots (perhaps most?) of the stuff in contrib, it's not *really* necessary. i'm very torn about this point. i'd like to encourage consistency (and therefore, the safe, good approach), but i don't want to saddle people with burdens and concerns that they don't necessarily have to worry about (yet). advice on this dilemma would be most appreciated. C) idiot-proofing the system Earl Miles wrote: >> Khalid Baheyeldin wrote: >> 1. The new release system does not enforce a branch for the major >> number. I know >> because I used tags only for a 1.1 and 2.0 and the system just >> accepted it. > > This may qualify as a bug and deserve correction. there are already a bunch of protective measures in place to help prevent people from screwing up the branching and tagging. [3] right now, for example, you can not add "DRUPAL-5--2" as a tag... that has to be a branch. contrib tags have to include the full version information, like DRUPAL-5--2-0 (for the 5.x-2.0 release). but, it does let you check out a DRUPAL-5 branch workspace (or even HEAD workspace), and add a DRUPAL-5--2-0 tag directly to that workspace, without ever creating a DRUPAL-5--2 branch. this behavior (at least regarding HEAD) is a feature, not a bug, and is the basis for the "recommended" scenario for HEAD i put in the handbook. the larger problem is that certainly in CVS, and, i fear, in SVN, too, there's no notion of what branch a specific tag belongs to, so it's impossible to enforce things like this [4]. thanks, -derek [1] ... and consider sponsoring work on http://drupal.org/node/89699 ;) [2] for example, see http://drupal.org/node/92452 [3] there are still some on the todo-list: http://drupal.org/node/90968 (http://groups.drupal.org/node/1830 for the full list) [4] details for the interested reader: a tag is just a symbolic name for a set of revisions of files (in CVS, a whole set of file/revision pairs, in SVN, a unique revision # across the entire repository for all files). a branch tracks changes to a set of files, but not all files on the branch change. therefore, a given version of a given file might be the same revision on many branches. so, when you mark that file as part of a tag across multiple files, there's no way to know "you're adding your DRUPAL-5--2-0 tag to the XXXX branch". i can elaborate if anyone is really interested in the details, but basically, there's no real notion (as far as i know, in *any* of the revision control systems out there) that a tag belongs to a specific branch. given that, these sorts of "idiot-proofing" requests are a) feature requests, not bugs and b) impossible to fulfill until the revision control technology catches up with our desires and notions. if you were doing a "cvs rtag -r DRUPAL-5--2 DRUPAL-5--2-0", that'd be more of what you have in mind but a) cvs fails to provide this info in the right hooks we need b) rtag is scary and error prone if you don't know what you're doing and c) i'm not sure SVN solves this particular failing of CVS, either (see my other post). granted, it's been a while since i looked really closely at SVN, so things might have changed, but from all i've ever known about it, an SVN tag is fundamentally just like a CVS tag: a symbolic name for a repository revision, and there's no inherent binding of tags to branches. if SVN has adding more tag meta data in recent versions, and someone wants to point me to the relevant docs, i'd be happy to learn more.

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Abstract database querying?
by Fernando Silva 26 Feb '07

26 Feb '07

Hi to all, I do not know if someone already done some work in this field, but I've created an issue about this in the tracker. If you have some time, please do a review or your points about it. http://drupal.org/node/122241 Thanks, Fernando Silva

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Release critical bugs for February 25, 2007
by drupal-devel＠drupal.org 25 Feb '07

25 Feb '07

Archive / bug reports Module is invisible - no block, no settings. age: 5 days 6 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/120849 Article / bug reports Rss feeds issue assigned: hitboy age: 1 day 18 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/122106 Multiple Pages Do Not Work age: 3 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/114595 4.7 Beta/ CVS Errors assigned: msameer age: 48 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/55533 Bluemarine / bug reports my themes cutting my content short FIREFOX assigned: hitboy age: 2 days 8 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/121893 CVS management/tracker / bug reports project/developers/[projectid] has sql error age: 1 week 19 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/120122 CVS management/tracker / feature requests enforce sequential release tags in xcvs-taginfo assigned: dww age: 17 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/90968 Event / bug reports [php5, clone] end-start-ongoing attribute does not ripple through age: 21 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/85972 Major timezone bug in event module age: 27 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/78572 event_start not being set age: 39 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/65609 Fatal Error After activating "Browse Scheduled Events" in modules age: 42 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/61920 INSTALL.txt incorrect age: 44 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/59019 event calendars off by day/not respecting timezones - fix? age: 47 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/56189 Flexinode generates an error age: 48 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/55135 Calendar subscribing not working age: 49 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/54036 Problem Selecting Event by Type age: 50 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/52883 Event start and end times not getting saved in database age: 1 year 10 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/41300 Issues with list view for events age: 1 year 11 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/39943 Database error keeps popping up age: 1 year 12 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/39396 Date problem on calendar, off by GMT offset age: 1 year 12 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/39193 Events module bugs adding and changeing events age: 1 year 12 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/39016 gmdate() warnings on windows install assigned: Omar Abdel-Wahab age: 1 year 34 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/26140 Event / feature requests Javascript calendar control and all day events age: 40 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/64490 Event / support requests How to display small calendar on homepage? assigned: dada78 age: 5 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/109630 Help!!! Site Broken!! age: 7 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/107239 Blank Page After Submit age: 45 weeks 20 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/58918 Can't Administer Event Module age: 1 year 7 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/43509 displaying event start info in flexinode tabular view? age: 1 year 20 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/33019 Event block missing content of many fields age: 1 year 22 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/31532 Gallery / bug reports IE error using embed not error with none-embed... when navigation block on right age: 42 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/62119 Gallery / support requests Configuring Apache mod_rewrite age: 1 week 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/118582 Im having trouble with setting the G2 of URI variable of Gallery module assigned: k.tang age: 1 week 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/118073 Gallery2 grants access without proper permission age: 8 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/105418 Glossary / feature requests po files and other language support age: 1 year 4 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/46313 Goofy / feature requests Goofy Forum UI age: 1 year 21 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/32294 Listhandler / bug reports user lookup on name only assigned: zeroj age: 47 weeks 8 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/56936 Link to mailhandler does not use l() function age: 1 year 6 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/44599 Listhandler caused error in "comment.module on line 996" ? age: 1 year 16 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/36244 Listhandler 4.6.0 fails to send emails at all age: 1 year 31 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/27095 Listhandler / tasks Correct/Complete Documentation age: 1 year 17 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/34909 Mailhandler / bug reports mailhandler requiring mailbox domain field despite using folder view age: 3 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/115472 Mailhandler / support requests Creating a page using mailhandler age: 36 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/68947 Mail Body not downloaded age: 1 year 7 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/43374 Members / bug reports foreach() assigned: neablo age: 1 year 8 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/42350 Meta tags / bug reports index,follow on 404 and 403 pages age: 1 week 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/119371 Database structure age: 3 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/113833 can't use php functions in body of nodes assigned: Robrecht Jacques age: 27 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/79315 Meta tags / feature requests Include custom Meta tags fields age: 7 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/107302 Enable nodewords for node type? age: 1 year 2 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/48869 Node Aggregator / bug reports nodes are being created with no body age: 1 year 11 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/40373 missing promote column assigned: Bèr Kessels age: 1 year 13 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/38836 Naming issues with files and DB tables age: 1 year 18 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/34298 RSS "no element found at line 1" age: 1 year 34 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/26185 Outdated help texts age: 2 years 29 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/9692 Import doesn't like XML/RSS feeds with no Title element age: 2 years 38 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/8128 Node Aggregator / tasks move XML-parser into an inclde file. age: 1 year 35 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/25439 Path / bug reports aliases that start with same string as other aliases age: 4 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/111775 Login as an alias gets cached age: 1 year 22 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/31699 Path / feature requests Admin created list of URL's to ignore age: 5 weeks 23 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/111171 Pdfview / bug reports Shows | Array instead of some "show content in pdf" age: 4 days 4 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/121234 custom fields not displayed age: 5 weeks 7 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/111340 Poormanscron / bug reports poormans cron hoses web server age: 4 days 12 hours url: http://drupal.org/node/121143 cron somehow interrupts MySql connection age: 6 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/108676 Remindme / bug reports Argument #1 is not an array age: 36 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/69286 Cron job creates SQL error age: 38 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/66202 Subscriptions / bug reports Unpublished nodes and comments age: 5 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/109755 Subscribe/Unsubscribe does not work on node form update age: 6 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/107907 Subscriptions remain active when access control maintain subscriptions is disabled age: 20 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/87625 Taxonomy dhtml / bug reports Disabling Teasers (Trimmed Posts) Not working when set to Unlimited assigned: samdeskin age: 17 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/91299 doesn't work with taxonomy_access? age: 22 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/85355 Error on Page with Internet Explorer 6 age: 36 weeks 4 days url: http://drupal.org/node/68906 Taxonomy DHTML's cache ignores user privileges age: 40 weeks 1 day url: http://drupal.org/node/64532 javascrip downloads square.gif for every category age: 2 years 1 week url: http://drupal.org/node/17366 Taxonomy dhtml / feature requests A unique page for each category group? age: 1 year 18 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/34610 TrackBack / bug reports install script does not put curly braces around table name age: 12 weeks 3 days url: http://drupal.org/node/100634 Sends trackbacks for unpublished nodes assigned: ankur age: 2 years 4 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/16239 User experience / bug reports password keeps getting lost for logins requiring me to request a new password age: 3 weeks 2 days url: http://drupal.org/node/115055 Verification Active assigned: maverickvarun age: 11 weeks 5 days url: http://drupal.org/node/101384 User experience / support requests 403 Forbidden error age: 2 weeks 6 days url: http://drupal.org/node/116090 Wiki / bug reports the wiki module can't work with HTML age: 1 year 3 weeks url: http://drupal.org/node/47124

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How to workaround with this array_merge_recursive error
by Pushparajan V 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Hi all, Iam upgrading provisionator module from 4.7 -> 5.0 compatible one. It has gone through a good move into drupal 5.0 except this bug. http://drupal.org/node/61048 Is it really a bug or the module code is doing this ?. The error is like, error:"warning: array_merge_recursive() [function.array-merge-recursive]: Argument #2 is not an array in /var/www/html/web47/modules/node.module on line 1605" The module can creates node types using "provisionatorclient_view". Thanks. -- Pushparajan V http://www.vprajan.org - - - - - - - - Know me: http://www.hackerkey.com/decrypt.php?hackerkey=v4sw57BCHJUY$hw3/5ln2pr6AFOP… - - - - - - - -

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Summer of Code: Call for mentors/help
by Angela Byron 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

It's that time of year again! Google's Summer of Code program is happening again this year, and a few of us are actively working on getting our preliminary stuff together to make this a huge success. Like last year, our goal is to have 2 mentors available per student. This has the following advantages: - People can take vacations without leaving the student "stranded" for a week. - If you don't know the answer to something, chances are your counter- part will. - It eases the time burden on both mentors because it's split between two people. - Students always have someone to turn to for help. - It shows Google that we're very committed to student success. However, there are currently only 25 mentors signed up to the SoC mentors group: http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2007-mentors. That means we could only handle a maximum of 12 students, which is fewer than last year. :( And that assumes that everyone in the group is able to be a mentor for whatever projects end up getting accepted. Ideally, I'd love to see this number up around 50, with a diverse range of skills, backgrounds, and experiences so we have all of our bases covered. So please, if you have knowledge in a particular area of Drupal (such as image/file handling), a particular skillset (AJAX was really hot last year, for example), feel comfortable enough to be a "backup" mentor, or just plain want to help students succeed, *please* sign up for the group and help us out! You can request a subscription here: http://groups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/2741 ... in "Additional details" please specify what your area of expertise is, what project proposals (if any) you see yourself being able to mentor, and whether you think you have time to be a primary or secondary mentor. Now. What if you don't see yourself able to act in a 'mentor' capacity, but still want to help? For example, you're a Drupal developer just kind of getting your feet wet, or you're experienced with Drupal but waaayyyy too busy to take on mentoring duties. Great news, you can still help! :) a) The Drupal Dojo folks are actively working on a "Getting started with Drupal development" guide, which will help new SoC students (and all other developers new to the project) become acquainted with Drupal and its architecture more quickly. You can help with that over here: http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting-started-with-drupal- development - this is something that new developers in particular can be extremely helpful in, because you guys know best what tripped you up as you were learning, and can read the resulting text to determine if it's still confusing. b) We still need A LOT of help creating decent project proposals: http://drupal.org/node/110704. Proposals need to be: - properly defined, including a list of deliverables. See for example http://drupal.org/node/121112 - realistically scoped, so that they can be completed in 3 months by someone who might know nothing about Drupal. See http://drupal.org/ node/120260 - do-able by a student. This means no crazy stuff like "Security audit all of core and contrib" or "rewrite the entire file API." - interesting and beneficial to students... we don't want them doing "grunt work" if at all possible... mention career and academic benefits outside of Drupal that the student will gain for working on the project. - have some kind of code as a deliverable. We can't have proposals that are about just creating documentation or researching into a certain thing. Providing you can spec your project idea out within these parameters, this is a big chance to get someone interested in whatever personal Drupal itch you have to scratch. Sorry, that got really long. :P In summary: - We need help with Summer of Code! - If you know a lot about something, please sign up to be a mentor: http://groups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/2741 - If you have great ideas, please write a good project proposal: http://drupal.org/node/110704. - If you are a good teacher or a newbie, please help with writing beginner docs for developers: http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting- started-with-drupal-development Also if possible, be relatively quick about it. ;) I'd like to have all of our mentor names and most of our project proposals nailed down by March 1. Thanks!! -Angie

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Re: [development] Help coding "Firing module events after the page isloaded"
by FGM 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

poormanscron does rely on this, indeed. ---- Original Message ---- From: metzlerd(a)evergreen.edu To: development(a)drupal.org Subject: RE: [development] Help coding "Firing module events after the page isloaded" Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:33:15 -0800 >I have a vague recollection that hook_exit used to fire after the >page [..] >(poormanscron relied on this, yes? ) [...]

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TinyMCE Plus -- TinyMCE javascripts checked into CVS
by Boris Mann 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

So, Drupal-Id is back over at TinyMCE Plus. And the TinyMCE javascripts are checked into CVS -- http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/modules/tinymce_plus/inc… So, I'm pretty confused as to where we are now * TinyMCE Plus, Drupal-Id back doing ??? * TinyMCE -- confusion, although I *think* we got agreement on 5--1.x as evolution of 4.7 code, and 5--2.x as the newer "compact" code with less UI -- Kevin as main owner * Moxie -- 4.7 evolution, Allie as lead, can probably go away if 5--1.x branch on "main" TinyMCE is OK This sucks :( -- Boris Mann Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com

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Re: [development] Multilingual support
by Gabor Hojtsy 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Good question Eric! I did a quick writeup to clear off some confusion and inform people: http://groups.drupal.org/node/2858 Gabor Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine wrote: > is there a i18n/l10n list development list (other than trans)? >

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Multilingual support
by Roberto Gerola 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Hi. I'm the author of Localizer, a module alternative to Internationalization, that adds multilingual support to Drupal. For whom interested in details of my module here there are some links : Project page : http://drupal.org/project/localizer Project issues : http://drupal.org/project/issues/localizer Manual, written by a friend, Edward : http://drupal.org/node/103419 (and we are working on a multilingual manual too) I have joined months ago the groups to add multilingual support to Drupal core : http://groups.drupal.org/i18n, where I have posted also my ideas and my proposals. I had joined also the mailing list activated by DevelopmentSeed : http://devseeddev.com/pipermail/internationalization_devseeddev.com/ But, unfortunately, it seems to me that there is not much activity on these communications channels. Reading this post http://groups.drupal.org/node/2781 and taking a look at the Subversion repository here : http://svn3.cvsdude.com/devseed/sandbox it seems to me that some crucial decisions about multingual support in Drupal are already taken, or am I wrong ? For example, if I understand correctly, taxonomy translations will be implemented duplicating the trees, variables will be duplicated in their own table adding a language attribute. Well, I would like to know what is, if exists, the list of features that will be implemented in Drupal 6 to achieve multilingual support, and also the technical solutions that could be adopted. For example, if the variables translation mechanism is definitive, we could think to use it soon, without working now on a different solution that could be abandoned in the next months. For taxonomy we could already port the new patches for the translation, and so on. I'm asking this because I would like, if possible, to avoid duplicating work and to be able to prepare a migration path for the users of Localizer when multilingual support will be in the core, probably, in the next release. As you can see in the issue lists of Localizer, we are working hard and there are some good requests by the users. I wonder if something of all this already done work can be used, at least as logic or idea if not as code. Many thanks. Roberto.

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How do you fix this, in theme.inc or the module?
by Carl Mc Dade 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

I am working on a module update and there is a problem with theme.inc throwing an error on lines 552+ There are lots of threads and issues about this but none of them are conclusive. http://drupal.org/node/111517 What exactly is causing this and what is needed to correct the module so that it works with D5.1? Is it in fact something in the modules or is it something in the core that needs to be accomodated? PHP 5.2 mysql5 Apache 2 windows2000 TIA Carl Mc Dade ____________________________ Web Developer --------------------------------- Check out the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.

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