March 2008 - Development - lists.drupal.org

site provisioning/multisite management/database migration tools
by Angela Byron 25 Mar '08

25 Mar '08

At Drupalcon, there was all kind of talk around challenges like how to manage a collection of multisite installs, how to do things like run cron or update.php on 60 gazillion sites, how to enable/disable "packages" of modules/functionality to avoid having to click through 10,000 things, how to migrate database changes from one site to another, etc. I'm planning on spending a few hours this week trying out various Drupal packaging/site provisioning systems and writing up a report comparing/contrasting them. Here are the modules I know about in this space: http://drupal.org/project/patterns: Module/system configurations that can be run at any time http://drupal.org/project/hostmaster: Bryght's multisite hosting managed site deployment framework, which includes http://drupal.org/project/hosting and http://drupal.org/project/provision http://drupal.org/project/autopilot: Migrate changes from dev to live http://drupal.org/project/deploy: Migrate changes from dev to live http://drupal.org/project/drush: Command-line tool containing a bunch of useful commands such as running cron, downloading modules, etc. Any others I should be taking a look at? -Angie

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Call to action: Brace for incoming torrent of SoC students :)
by Angela Byron 24 Mar '08

24 Mar '08

Google Summer of Code applications open tomorrow and last until March 31. That's a very short period of time for students to come to Drupal, figure out what they want to do, get feedback on their ideas, and submit their applications to Google. So! We need an army of friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable Drupal folks at the ready in #drupal and http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008 to help answer student questions, review student proposals/project ideas, point students toward resources (either documentation-wise or people-wise), cross-post proposals to relevant groups to get further input/feedback, and generally just be there to guide folks on their initial steps into the community. Some of the ideas that made it to our ideas list @ http://drupal.org/google-summer-of-code/2008/ideas-list include integration with numerous 3rd party APIs such as YouTube, Last.fm, and CiteProc, improvements to modules such as Date, Calendar, Organic Groups, and Views, and several architectural pieces such as a Validation API and performance profiling system. In addition, several students have suggested awesome ideas of their own in the Summer of Code 2008 group. It looks like it's going to be a rockin' summer!! So please, if you could hang out in #drupal and comment on posts in http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008 when you have a chance this week, it would be *greatly* appreciated. Let's show these students what a great community Drupal is to work with. :) -Angie

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Re: [development] GSoC?: Mirroring / download improvements with Metalink
by Anthony Bryan 23 Mar '08

23 Mar '08

> I suggest posting this to the Summer of Code 2008 group on groups.drupal.org (http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008) as many reviewers' eyeballs are likely to be there as the 5:00PST deadline approaches. Ezra, I was going to do that but didn't since I'm not a student ("Students: Please post your project ideas to this group"). But I've posted it now, thanks for the suggestion. http://groups.drupal.org/node/10074 > I would definitely be interested (as a student) in implementing something like > this, as it seems like a really nifty idea. Benjamin, thanks! btw, Fedora will hopefully be adding support into MirrorManager soon-ish :) A good number of other distros use it now for ISOs, along with OpenOffice.org and other projects. -- (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ] )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads

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CCK fields, Views, and Sortable column
by Sean Wingert 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

I need sortable column headers, ideally using CCK and Views. So, I created 3 CCK fields. Then I created a page View using the "table" View Type. In Views, only one CCK field, the "address" CCK extension module, provides a dropdown for Sortable. In other words, only one field (address) is sortable. I need multiple fields. Is this a bug, or (more likely) am I doing something wrong? Thanks! Sean

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Google contacts API integration
by Sandip Dev 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

I am a student of computer science at Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of technology(www.svnit.ac.in). I saw the Drupal ideas list for GSOC. I would like to work on integrating Google Contacts API with Drupal. I would like to discuss about it with the developers Regards, Sandip Dev

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Drupal 7 timeline
by Dries Buytaert 19 Mar '08

19 Mar '08

Hello world, I've posted some more information about the Drupal 7 timeline at: http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-timeline -- Dries Buytaert :: http://buytaert.net/

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Re: [development] module duplication in Drupal contrib
by Larry Garfield 19 Mar '08

19 Mar '08

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:25:40 -0300, "Greg Knaddison - GVS" <Greg(a)GrowingVentureSolutions.com> wrote: > Hi, > > "Modules that duplicate functionality available from an existing > module are damaging to the Drupal project." > > Please support or refute that statement and propose strategies for > managing CVS applications and/or projects on Drupal.org in a way that > will best help the Drupal project. > > I'm using "Drupal project" in a very loose sense so you should infer > that it includes lots of groups of people like new users, site > builders, contributors, drupal.org admins, the security team, etc. > > Thanks, > Greg Support: Time spend "reinventing the wheel" (duplicating modules) is time not spent making the wheels we have better. That results in 2-3-4 mediocre modules with one single point of failure instead of one good module with multiple possible maintainers. That makes it more likely that a user will find a module inadequate, or that it will become abandoned leaving the user high and dry. That's damaging both to Drupal-based sites and to Drupal's reputation. Solutions: I really need to get back to this issue at some point: http://drupal.org/node/168819 If someone else wants to take it over, please do. A block like this needs to be very prominent on the site (or one of the sites after the redesign). --Larry Garfield

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'Tis the Season for Summer of Code
by Angela Byron 19 Mar '08

19 Mar '08

Since some of you don't keep an eye on the front page of drupal.org, I'll repeat the salient points of http://drupal.org/node/235590 here: Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is ramping up fast. For those who don't know, GSoC is where Google pays students $4,500 over the summer to work on open source projects, one of which is Drupal. :) GSoC has resulted in fantastic code for Drupal, as well as fantastic long-term contributors. In order to make GSoC a success again this year, *we need your help*! MENTORS: If you know your way around Drupal coding, and you'll have some availability over the summer (May 26 - August 18), then you'd be in a great position to be a mentor. Mentors are assigned in pairs to students and act as resources to help scope the projects, be there for implementation questions, etc. Ever wish you could clone yourself so you could work on the cool Drupal stuff you want to do? Help a student do cool Drupal stuff! :) Sign up at: - http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008-mentors and - http://code.google.com/soc/2008/mentor_home.html IDEALISTS: If you have big ideas about where Drupal could be headed, and can spec them out to a level that other people can understand what they are ;) then we could use your help in fleshing out our ideas list @ http://drupal.org/google-summer-of-code/2008/ideas-list. Projects need to keep someone busy for 2.5 months, and need to be something that won't already be done by May. ;) We need to get our project ideas list finalized *no later than March 24*, so time is of the essence here. REVIEWERS: Probably *the biggest bottleneck we have right now* is around the list of proposals at http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008. We need an army of Drupal folks to take the good community-submitted proposals and move them over to our official ideas list, and to provide feedback and advice to the student-submitted proposals. WELCOME WAGON: Don't feel like you have the technical expertise to be a mentor or won't have time over the summer to commit? You can *still* help by being on the lookout in #drupal for potential GSoC students and helping to point them towards handbook pages, API documentation, contributed modules, and other resources that can help them spec out their projects. Thanks a lot everyone, and here's to a rockin' summer! -Angie

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GSoC student proposal question
by Casey 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

Hello all. Prospective student here. I have some ideas for features I'd like to implement into Drupal, but I have a quick question before I present my proposal: if the community finds my ideas better suited for a module separate from the core distribution, can it still be accepted as a GSoC project? Or are mentors only interested in core features/improvements? Thank you, Casey

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Placing menu items
by Nancy Wichmann 17 Mar '08

17 Mar '08

I'm working on moving most of my PHP pages into site-specific modules. The most annoying part of this is having to go back and manually move the menu items to the correct menu parents. As I develop these menu items, is there a way to directly assign them to "Members Only" as opposed to "Navigation?" Nancy E. Wichmann, PMP

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