And on an entirely different topic, I've a question for the other contrib maintainers out there. With Drupal 5 out, most modules are or will be upgraded to it. Drupal 4.7 itself is in maintenance mode. What about contribs for it? If you maintain a contrib module, will you be providing just bug fixes for the 4.7 version after your 5 version is released? Will you maintain feature development on both? If so, for how long? Mostly I'm asking to see if there's a consensus on what the "responsible maintainer" thing to do is, since I've a few modules that I'm in the process of upgrading and I'm not how long I should bother to deal with feature requests for the 4.7 versions. (I figure it goes without saying that bug fixes for 4.7 for as long as Drupal 4.7 gets bug fixes is "the responsible thing to do".) -- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
On 1/30/07, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote:
And on an entirely different topic, I've a question for the other contrib maintainers out there.
With Drupal 5 out, most modules are or will be upgraded to it. Drupal 4.7 itself is in maintenance mode. What about contribs for it?
If you maintain a contrib module, will you be providing just bug fixes for the 4.7 version after your 5 version is released? Will you maintain feature development on both? If so, for how long?
You set your own rules. Maintaining just 5 is fine. What if a lot of people want stuff added to 4.7? Ask for a maintainer for the 4.7 branch, just like Drupal. -- Boris Mann Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com
The answer is: it depends. Depends on the maintainer's time, personal taste, whether patches are submitted, whether clients ask for features, ...etc. Freezing the last release (as in no new features, and only critical bug fixes), is perfectly fine.
Larry Garfield wrote:
Mostly I'm asking to see if there's a consensus on what the "responsible maintainer" thing to do is, since I've a few modules that I'm in the process of upgrading and I'm not how long I should bother to deal with feature requests for the 4.7 versions. (I figure it goes without saying that bug fixes for 4.7 for as long as Drupal 4.7 gets bug fixes is "the responsible thing to do".)
For Views I am adding features to both the Drupal 5 and Drupal 4.7 versions where it is feasible and not difficult, because at the moment it's easier for me if the two versions stay roughly in sync. Where it is a pain, though, 4.7 doesn't get the new feature. Also, Views is one of the most widely used 4.7 modules, and I feel some obligation to keep it going at least until Drupal 6 is available, at which point I will likely EOL the 4.7 version entirely, as I don't want to maintain 3 stable branches. For my other modules, it varies from module to module, but most of them will go into bugfix-only mode for 4.7 and features will go into 5. It depends upon how heavily used I think it is. Of course, for most of these modules I'm more than willing to let other people help maintain them, and I'm still looking for people to step up and take some of my lower priority modules such as delicious, and I'm really hoping for someone to come help work on forum access.
On Tuesday 30 January 2007 23:45, Earl Miles wrote:
For Views I am adding features to both the Drupal 5 and Drupal 4.7 versions where it is feasible and not difficult, because at the moment it's easier for me if the two versions stay roughly in sync. Where it is a pain, though, 4.7 doesn't get the new feature.
This is exactly what Jeff Eaton and I are doing with Links. There are still a lot of production 4.7 sites out there -- and some of them are mine! -- so it still makes sense to keep 4.7 as a "viable" branch for a while. But I expect to put the serious new development into 5.x rather than 4.7. Links may be a bit unusual in that much of the code is in an API file that tries really hard to be core-version-neutral. Scott -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Syscrusher (Scott Courtney) Drupal page: http://drupal.org/user/9184 syscrusher at 4th dot com Home page: http://4th.com/
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