we need to be able to control what blocks are visible based on role, and it should be in core, not via php hackery. there's already an issue about this: http://drupal.org/node/18018 apparently, the only reason this never got committed, in spite of much interest and effort, is this potentially innocent question from dries: "Could we align the page-visibility code with this code, so they are more conform/consistent/similar?" (comment #46) does anyone here know what he's talking about? ;) note: he didn't change the status to "code needs work" or anything. earlier in the same issue, he said: "Where did I say that getting 4.7 out is less important?" (#32) clearly, he agrees (along with probably dozens of us on this list, and maybe hundreds, if not thousands, of drupal site admins in the world) that we should add this feature before 4.7.0. i updated the patch to be current with CVS head and attached that to comment #49. i think it's RTBC, but didn't feel like i was in a position to set the status to that on my own. ;) can some of the heavy-weights around here please comment on the issue, ideally, by changing the status to RTBC (or better yet, "fixed" after it's been applied)? ;) thanks! -derek (dww) p.s. killes just replied after i composed this message, and i re-rolled another patch based on his feedback. but i'm still sending it to the list for community opinions and support on this. ;)
Tough situation. We've ranted over and over .... "Read our lips, no new features". I can't help but think that making an exception, just days away from the release candidate, is a bad idea. I *love* this feature. There are a dozen other features that I love as well, though. New features, in my opinion, are what we have Drupal 4.8 for. Let's get 4.7 out the door and then decide to speed up our devel-release cycle. -Robert Derek Wright wrote:
we need to be able to control what blocks are visible based on role, and it should be in core, not via php hackery. there's already an issue about this:
apparently, the only reason this never got committed, in spite of much interest and effort, is this potentially innocent question from dries:
"Could we align the page-visibility code with this code, so they are more conform/consistent/similar?" (comment #46)
does anyone here know what he's talking about? ;) note: he didn't change the status to "code needs work" or anything. earlier in the same issue, he said:
"Where did I say that getting 4.7 out is less important?" (#32)
clearly, he agrees (along with probably dozens of us on this list, and maybe hundreds, if not thousands, of drupal site admins in the world) that we should add this feature before 4.7.0.
i updated the patch to be current with CVS head and attached that to comment #49. i think it's RTBC, but didn't feel like i was in a position to set the status to that on my own. ;)
can some of the heavy-weights around here please comment on the issue, ideally, by changing the status to RTBC (or better yet, "fixed" after it's been applied)? ;)
thanks! -derek (dww)
p.s. killes just replied after i composed this message, and i re-rolled another patch based on his feedback. but i'm still sending it to the list for community opinions and support on this. ;)
On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:53:14 +0100 Robert Douglass wrote:
I can't help but think that making an exception, just days away from the release candidate, is a bad idea.
[cross posting from http://drupal.org/node/18018] argh. ;) dries himself thought this was worthy of getting in 4.7.0. kieran has talked about this feature as the "#1 requested usability feature from admins" (right?). there have been *dozens* of forum posts about it. the code is ready. it's been reviewed and tested many times. for apparently no good reason, it sat here for a month, unloved. :( i'm all for getting 4.7.0 out the door, but spending 10 minutes now to finally commit the patch can save hours (days?) of needless support and admin time hacking around this problem for the entire lifespan of 4.7. i'm also all for speeding up the devel/release cycle, but i'm sure it'll be months before 6.8.0 is out, and at least a year before most drupal sites are running 4.8, probably longer. i think it'd be a shame to force all our users to suffer through another release without this crucial feature. i too, have other features i'd love to see, but they aren't as universally requested as this one, so i'm willing to wait on those. also, since this *does* alter the db schema (it adds a new table), if we don't get it committed before the RC, there's no hope for it before 6.8. i'm sure many of us would be disappointed in that, from dries on down the chain. ;) steven, can you comment? i think dries left you in charge as the ultimate arbitrator of last resort. ;) thanks, -derek
On Saturday 25 March 2006 01:42 am, Derek Wright wrote:
argh. ;) dries himself thought this was worthy of getting in 4.7.0. kieran has talked about this feature as the "#1 requested usability feature from admins" (right?). there have been *dozens* of forum posts about it. the code is ready. it's been reviewed and tested many times. for apparently no good reason, it sat here for a month, unloved. :(
We've been in feature freeze mode (supposedly) for several months. It's not something that will start with the RC series, but something that started at the end of last year before the beta series was released. The reason it sat unloved is because everyone's been focusing on what's already in 4.7: fixing critical bugs and making 4.7 stable. Beta is about stabilizing what's already there, not adding to it. RC is about making sure that what we think is stable, actually is stable, not making it stable. Adding a new feature at the doorstep of RC is not making it stable, but potentially breaking it again, no matter how well tested the patch is.
i'm all for getting 4.7.0 out the door, but spending 10 minutes now to finally commit the patch
10 minutes to commit the patch, and a week to a month (or more) of regression testing and finding & fixing the bugs it /will/ cause. Hopefully it will only be a week and it won't produce any new critical bugs.
can save hours (days?) of needless support and admin time hacking around this problem for the entire lifespan of 4.7. i'm also all for speeding up the devel/release cycle, but i'm sure it'll be months before 6.8.0 is out, and at least a year before most drupal sites are running 4.8, probably longer. i think it'd be a shame to force all our users to suffer through another release without this crucial feature.
I think it would be a shame to make users wait longer for 4.7, which adding this feature would surely do.
i too, have other features i'd love to see, but they aren't as universally requested as this one, so i'm willing to wait on those. also, since this *does* alter the db schema (it adds a new table), if we don't get it committed before the RC, there's no hope for it before 6.8.
IMO, there's no hope now.
i'm sure many of us would be disappointed in that, from dries on down the chain. ;)
As much as I would like to see this feature added (I myself would have used it a few times), I would be far more disappointed if 4.7 were delayed yet another week or more, as it will definitely be if that feature is added now. I have been waiting for features already in 4.7 for production sites for a couple of months.
steven, can you comment? i think dries left you in charge as the ultimate arbitrator of last resort. ;)
thanks, -derek
I am only a plankton in the Drupal Development Food Chain, and my opinion doesn't count for much, but in my mind this is a common sense issue. -- Jason Flatt http://www.oadae.net/ Father of Six: http://www.flattfamily.com/ (Joseph, 13; Cramer, 11; Travis, 9; Angela; Harry, 5; and William, 12:04 am, 12-29-2005) Linux User: http://www.sourcemage.org/ Drupal Fanatic: http://drupal.org/
Derek Wright wrote:
On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 09:53:14 +0100 Robert Douglass wrote:
I can't help but think that making an exception, just days away from the release candidate, is a bad idea.
[cross posting from http://drupal.org/node/18018]
argh. ;) dries himself thought this was worthy of getting in 4.7.0. kieran has talked about this feature as the "#1 requested usability feature from admins" (right?). there have been *dozens* of forum posts about it. the code is ready. it's been reviewed and tested many times. for apparently no good reason, it sat here for a month, unloved. :( i'm all for getting 4.7.0 out the door, but spending 10 minutes now to finally commit the patch can save hours (days?) of needless support and admin time hacking around this problem for the entire lifespan of 4.7. i'm also all for speeding up the devel/release cycle, but i'm sure it'll be months before 6.8.0 is out, and at least a year before most drupal sites are running 4.8, probably longer. i think it'd be a shame to force all our users to suffer through another release without this crucial feature. i too, have other features i'd love to see, but they aren't as universally requested as this one, so i'm willing to wait on those. also, since this *does* alter the db schema (it adds a new table), if we don't get it committed before the RC, there's no hope for it before 4.8.
I think I would advocate getting 4.7 out the door *this week* (if possible), and then I (as well as people like Derek and others who have small features they really wanted in 4.7) will strongly advocate for a very, VERY short cycle until 4.8 -- like releasing 4.8 in May, and pushing the BIG new features (I'm sure Adrian has something up his sleeve :-) ) to the next release after 4.8. We have a lot of pent-up development that's ready to commit except for the 4.7 "code freeze" so 4.8 could really happen that fast -- IMHO, of course. [I'd argue separately that the next big API change release should be called 5.0, not 4.8 or 4.9, but that's another battle.] ..chrisxj
the only reasons i have any hope at all for this are: 1) dries wanted this feature in 6.7 2) on IRC about a week ago: dww: am i correct in assuming that no usability features will be added before the 4.7.0 RC? ... killes: dww: usability is always possible. i maintain this is a critical usability feature for drupal. i thoroughly understand what everyone's saying in their arguments for delay, and they're all valid points. i still believe the time lost on hardening this feature will more than be paid back in reduced support effort. given that the RC itself isn't *yet* RTBReleased (2 of the 4 remaining critical bugs are currently in "needs work", and 1 is only "active"), i think hardening/testing of this feature can happen in parallel with everything else going on to get the RC out... chris's proposal for an ultra-short 6.8.0 that basically only includes all the RTBC features that are currently on hold is a reasonable compromise, though i'm sure that'll (somewhat) upset drumm, all the CCK-in-core advocates, etc. i can see both sides of this question. e.g. i'd also like to see more CCK-goodness, i'm working on all this event-related improvement stuff (http://drupal.org/node/52884), so i wouldn't mind more time in 4.8 development to get all that done (or at least big chunks of it). but, i'd also like to see more existing functionality available in a public release, so i'd be happy either way. i think i've said all i have to usefully offer to this decision. thanks, -derek
Derek Wright wrote:
the only reasons i have any hope at all for this are:
1) dries wanted this feature in 6.7
2) on IRC about a week ago:
dww: am i correct in assuming that no usability features will be added before the 4.7.0 RC? ... killes: dww: usability is always possible.
i maintain this is a critical usability feature for drupal.
What I meant by usability is more like http://drupal.org/node/53870
i thoroughly understand what everyone's saying in their arguments for delay, and they're all valid points. i still believe the time lost on hardening this feature will more than be paid back in reduced support effort. given that the RC itself isn't *yet* RTBReleased (2 of the 4 remaining critical bugs are currently in "needs work", and 1 is only "active"), i think hardening/testing of this feature can happen in parallel with everything else going on to get the RC out...
I intend to release the RC today. :p Not sure I'll make it, though. Cheers, Gerhard
As far as I know, this patch was one that was 'approved' for 4.7 some time back (DrupalCon Feb 7-9 at least), and identified as one of the top requests from surveys. So, this is not a feature that has snuck in against the feature freeze per se. Now, if it causes instability, performance issues or other side effects, then I would be against it, but that is not the case so far. So, let us try to get it in.
DrupalCon was way after the feature freeze, 1st september 2005. http://drupal.org/node/28466 Goba Khalid B wrote:
As far as I know, this patch was one that was 'approved' for 4.7 some time back (DrupalCon Feb 7-9 at least), and identified as one of the top requests from surveys.
So, this is not a feature that has snuck in against the feature freeze per se.
Now, if it causes instability, performance issues or other side effects, then I would be against it, but that is not the case so far.
So, let us try to get it in.
participants (7)
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Chris Johnson -
Derek Wright -
Gabor Hojtsy -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Jason Flatt -
Khalid B -
Robert Douglass