[development] Patches - code freeze

[Dries Buytaert]

*** Larry wrote in another thread:
> In addition to claiming modules to work on, if there are any  
> pending patches that make substantial changes to a core module that  
> need to go in before code freeze let us know about those, too, so  
> we can not touch that module yet.  This performance refactoring can  
> stretch post-1 June I believe since there's no API changes (Dries,  
> correct me if that's an incorrect statement), and I'd rather not  
> block someone else's patch that's almost-there. :-)

There are a lot of patches really, and we could use a hand reviewing  
those.  And when I say "reviewing", I mean "studying the code and  
thinking it through" rather than just showing your support to the  
author of the patch.  We could use more "in-depth reviews" to help  
some of the bigger patches move forward.

I'm currently on the train so I can't check the issue queue, but at  
the top of my head (and afraid to miss out on some other important  
patches), here is my top-6 things I'd like to see us focus on.  In  
order of priority:

   1. Getting the pending i18n patches into Drupal core -- I'd rather  
not ship with a half solution.
   2. Getting OpenID into Drupal core.
   3. Getting actions into Drupal core.
   4. Getting schema API into Drupal core.
   5. Paving the path for webservices: data API, being more XML/REST/ 
JSON friendly, etc.
   6. Getting more of CCK into Drupal core.

Most of these patches are important for Drupal's future.  If we can't  
get them in by the code freeze, this means that these features might  
have to wait another year (!) to get into Drupal 7.  Having to miss  
out on these for one year, might be a really long time ... for  
various reasons, I'd rather not see that happen.

At the same time, I'm still looking for patches that help improve the  
user experience or that help improve performance.  Most users don't  
really care about the architectural changes that happen under the  
hood; they care about bling and ease-of-use.  So things like forum  
module improvements, more accessible terminology, tracker  
improvements, easier access control, upload/file handling  
improvements, search module improvements, are no-brainers that tend  
to jump to the top of my TODO/review-list.  But when these don't make  
it into Drupal 6, they'll be able to live in contrib for a while and  
most of the time, that's perfectly fine.

An exception is the update_status.module that Earl and Derek are  
working on -- we definitely want that in core even though it is not  
an architectural change.

It's not always black and white, but in general, the patches that I  
care most about at this point in the release cycle -- and which I  
encourage *you* to care most about as well -- are architectural  
changes that impact the future of Drupal.  Of course, these are more  
difficult to grok and review, but when you do, you'll have a bigger  
impact on our future. :-)

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/