April 2008 - Development - lists.drupal.org

Upgrades from 5.7 to 6.2 with PostgreSQL - how to debug?
by Yannick Warnier 19 Apr '08

19 Apr '08

Hello, I've been ripping my hair off my head for the last few hours trying to find out why the hell my Drupal 5.2 site wouldn't let me upgrade it to 6.2. I'm using PostgreSQL 7.4 and I'm apparently running into more problems because of that, but it doesn't seem to be the blocking point. I think I've done everything I should have done. I have followed the upgrade procedure to the letter (from UPGRADE.txt in 6.2). I have a 5.2 to start with, but a direct upgrade to 6.2 failed - database errors in adding columns with default values - apparently PG 7.4 doesn't allow that, but there seems to be some code to tackle that in includes/database.psql.inc but I'm afraid I'll have to report a problem in that code, as it doesn't divide an ADD COLUMN query with default values into a ADD COLUMN and an ALTER COLUMN as it should. So I decided to do these field updates manually (cache.serialized and this kind of stuff, about 16 queries) and that did help, but I got stuck in the modules update process. Looking into it, it seemed that the process got stuck right after processing system_update_6019() which is in the /modules/system/system.install file. So I first tried to divide this into little steps. I upgraded from 5.2 to 5.7 and that went all right. No problem at all, smooth upgrade. Then I tried again from 5.7 to 6.2. Again, it failed right after 6019. So I started to debug (a lot) and after long hours trying to understand how the process jumped from one update to the other, I must say I still don't get it, and I think that's why I haven't been able to fix the problem until now. Meanwhile, I realised that, inside 6019, there were a few queries that didn't make it with PostgreSQL 7.4. Notably, the field type change for boxes.bid (to serial) which did apparently not pass correctly through the database queries parsing functions. Anyway, so fed up of trying this, I tried an upgrade from 5.7 to 6.0, but I get stuck on the same problem there (around 6019). Surprisingly, changing the refresh time at the end of the while (!$current_set['success']) { loop inside _batch.inc :: _batch_process() seemed to change the position where the upgrade process halts. However, it only varies from 6016 to 6021, no matter what the time change is. Most than anything else, I've been looking at how to identify what exactly is breaking the upgrade process, but without a developer's insight on this, I fear I might be loosing a lot more hours trying to figure it out. I've looked into the batch table, but it doesn't really speak to me... So, could someone give me a hand? Yannick

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Desperately seeking SoC co-mentors
by Angela Byron 18 Apr '08

18 Apr '08

On Monday, we'll be announcing our final project selections for Google Summer of Code. Each selected projects has been assigned a primary mentor already, but there are still a few projects without assigned co-mentors. We always like to assign co-mentors on each project, both so that students have a couple of different people they can bounce ideas off of, and also so that one of the mentors can go on vacation while the other fills in. We're specifically looking for people with the expertise in some of the following areas: - Drupal Search - Security - SimpleTest/unit testing - Machine learning/RDF - Dynamic image creation/manipulation - jQuery - OpenID - Nodequeue module - Date/Calendar-related stuff So if you'll have some time over the summer and would like to help usher in some new Drupal contributors to write some awesome new code for Drupal, please: 1. Head to http://code.google.com/soc/2008/mentor_home.html and fill out your mentor profile. This allows you to view the SoC applications. 2. Head to http://groups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/9196 to request a subscription to the SoC 2008 Mentors group. 3. Ping me on IRC or via e-mail so I can approve your subscriptions. 4. Head to http://groups.drupal.org/node/10657, which contains a list of our accepted applications in a wiki. Edit the page to fill in your name on any of the ?s. Thanks for your support! :) -Angie

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Old Issues
by Adam Cooper 15 Apr '08

15 Apr '08

Hi all. I just wondered what the procedure is for dealing with very old issues. I've got some in my queue that were last updated 2+ years ago and the projects in question are probably unmaintained now anyway (flexinode, swish-e indexer etc). What do I do? Thanks Adam

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Coding style update -- does the concat operator coding style make sense?
by Earl Miles 14 Apr '08

14 Apr '08

Konstantin took some initiative after my umpteenth teeth-gnashing fest over the inconcistency of the concatenation operator in Drupal's coding standards. Personally, I Don't Get It. Why does the . operator have a different coding standard than any other binary operator? Why does: 'foo'. $bar make sense, but 3+ $bar not make sense? I don't quite get the special relationship between strings and the . operator that Drupal's coding standard espouses. Attempts to explain it to me have, thus far, failed. Also, I've never seen this standard anywhere else, not in any other language, nor anything even remotely like it. Konstantin's patch to Drupal would remove this inconsistency and let us change this standard: http://drupal.org/node/245115

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Official Textmate bundle now available
by Moshe Weitzman 14 Apr '08

14 Apr '08

Fans of the Textmate IDE for OSX might want to install the new official bundle that I've submitted to Macromates. You can read more about the bundle in my post to the Drupal IDE group - http://groups.drupal.org/node/10692.

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Re: [development] Being noisy on installation...
by Chad Phillips -- Apartment Lines 12 Apr '08

12 Apr '08

On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Jason Flatt wrote: > As the situation currently stands, that is actually no better. When > I enable, > say, ten modules at one time and get three "Your module was enabled." > messages, that does not improve the situation. totally agree. which is why i'm arguing for core to handle (at least) the essential user information regarding module operations. currently module authors are faced a 'no information' or 'inconsistent information' choice when multiple modules are installed. neither is good.

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Re: [development] Being noisy on installation...
by Chad Phillips -- Apartment Lines 11 Apr '08

11 Apr '08

On Apr 11, 2008, at 1:37 AM, Earl Miles wrote: > I'm not sure Views originated this technique; but then again, I'm > not sure it didn't. i'm pretty sure i was the first person to do this. which either makes me a visionary or a bastard depending on how you look at it... ;) my personal opinion is that core should be more informative about what happens for something as important as a module installation. without the messages i currently hack into my own modules, the only way a user knows anything happened at all is by scrolling down the mile long list of checkboxes, and making sure that their module is now marked as enabled -- lame.

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Re: [development] Being noisy on installation...
by Chad Phillips -- Apartment Lines 11 Apr '08

11 Apr '08

On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Morbus wrote: > Erm. What about the "The configuration options have been saved." msg? you're right. that's something. but it's still lame. my sentence probably should have read "the only way a user knows anything happened at all _regarding my module_ is by scrolling down..."

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Being noisy on installation...
by Morbus Iff 11 Apr '08

11 Apr '08

So, I was reading over: http://drupal.org/node/161085 and saw one of my personal pet peeves jump out: "Even if your module doesn't have need of a hook_install function, it's nice to Display a note confiriming that the module is installed and ready for action." Core doesn't do it at all and, as far as I can tell, it originated with Views (which most folks take as an admonition that It's Right). Thoughts from the peanut gallery? At first blush, I'm horrifically opposed to it, because I think we have enough to worry about then reading /successful/ messages - I'd much rather Drupal interrupt me when something /bad/ has happened, not when something I /expect/ to happen actually happened. But, playing my own devil's advocate, I could say that "well, there's precedence already - we always inform the user when something has been created, updated, or deleted successfully". Whatever we decide, I care about consistency. If we're going to recommend this in our style guides, then /core should do the same thing/. -- Morbus Iff .sig on the other machine

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DrupalToughLove.com launches (from chx and Morbus, gasp!)
by Morbus Iff 10 Apr '08

10 Apr '08

From the mission statement: "We all make mistakes; that's how we learn. Sometimes, though, we need someone to point out our mistakes, to sift through the chaos that is Drupal's contributions repository. Inspired by a comment on Morbus's code quality entry, chx and Morbus have taken up the task of giving some tough love to Drupal's greatest strength: the army of developers using its APIs. Want your own code publicly reviewed? Let us know!" http://www.drupaltoughlove.com/ -- Morbus Iff ( est quaedam flere voluptas ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Enjoy: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.videounderbelly.com/ aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus

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