At 5:31 PM -0400 15/5/06, Khalid B wrote:
The core developers innovate as they see fit, and do not let the API freeze limit their creativity, the features to be implemented, or the overall flexibility, power and compactness of Drupal's core.
I know. This, along with "code is gold" is the Drupal mantra. And I would argue that this attitude has to change. It is a sign that Drupal is immature, without focus and not much more than a plaything for the core developers. This "moving target" API model makes Drupal frustrating for someone building a site which they want to run in the long term. And as for trying to build a business around Drupal... well, there's surely a lot of money in helping people upgrade their installations. But personally I want to be able to offer a reliable, up-to-date, feature-rich hosting environment, and all Drupal promises me is a world of hurt. I would also argue that the lack of a robust API has a detrimental effect on the quality of the code in Drupal. For a simple example, trace through the code that displays a menu item and see how much code is executed to perform this task! I think this is a good example of where "code is gold" and not having a well-defined API to work within has led code which is complex, convoluted and inefficient.
Perhaps it is best to spend energy on migration paths (e.g. Flexinode to CCK, forms updater, ...etc.) rather than freeze the API early.
I'm not talking about freezing the API early. I mentioned that my goal would be to have a stable API for Drupal 5.0 with CCK. And upgrade paths don't help people upgrade their custom modules. I think this is where the most pain is felt with upgrades. I realise there will always be major new features which require changes to the API. But what I want to do is work to create a robust API that will allow incremental changes to be made behind the scenes without impacting so heavily on both contrib and custom modules. ...R.