[development] CVS HEAD, code freeze, zeitgeist

[Jeff Eaton]

Chris Johnson wrote:
> I only said a year sabbatical to make it clear that nothing was going 
> to happen soon enough.  I am not really talking about abandoned 
> modules, just those that might not get updated "soon enough" where 
> "soon enough" is open for interpretation.

A module whose maintainer is gone for a year is, IMO, effectively 
abandoned. It might continue working, but it's abandoned. And if a large 
percentage of Drupal users depend on it, that is a problem completely 
separate from any version upgrade woes.


>> I can think of maybe a handful of modules that are THAT complex. Views?
>> Yes. Project? Yes. eCommerce and its suite of related modules?
>> Absolutely. Those are all important, but declaring that we will never
>> ship Drupal if those modules aren't released at the same time is silly.
> I didn't suggest not shipping Drupal if those modules are not released 
> at the same time.  That's a straw horse.  All I said is that the 
> current course of action is not addressing the problem.
OK, that suggestion was an integral part of the previous 'Golden 
Repository' suggestions from past discussions, so I thought it was what 
you were talking about. I just think that setting up a special 
qualification for a specific set of popular modules is going to help the 
situation any. If something is that critical and popular, it doesn't 
take putting a gold star on the node to know that it is important, you 
know? And if telling people, "Hey, this is really important!" is the 
only thing that the designation accomplishes, we're back in square one.

During the 4.7 freeze/beta/RC cycle, Dries sent out a list of critical 
modules that were 'must haves' for the 4.7 release, and encouraged 
developers to focus on them. Barring some sort of official 'we won't 
ship without X ready' policy, I don't see what more would be 
accomplished by naming that list.

I'm not saying that the problem of critical and complex modules lagging 
behind the Core development cycle doesn't exist. Just that maintaining a 
special list isn't going to help the problem.

--Jeff