[development] All hands on deck for Drupal 7 alpha 1 this Friday!

[Angela Byron]

Greetings, folks!

As you may or may not have heard (http://webchick.net/node/73), on  
Friday we are going to roll Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1. This will be the very  
first time that the *vast* majority of the community (not to mention  
the outside world) will download Drupal 7, and play around with all of  
the hard work you've all been doing for the past ~24 months. So! I  
would love to do everything we can to really shine it up over the next  
couple of days.

There are three queues that I would love people to focus on if they  
have even *one hour* this week sometime to help Drupal 7:

1. webchick's D7 alpha hit list:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal? 
status[]=Open&issue_tags=webchick%27s+D7+alpha+hit+list

A variety of either *seriously* critical bugs (lingering critical API  
breakages, the broken upgrade path, missing security updates) or  
really glaring user-facing bugs that just make D7 look really sloppy.  
Some of these are real head-scratchers, but others I think are pretty  
obvious things that can be fixed in just a few lines of code.

We will still release the alpha regardless of the state of this list  
on Friday, but progress here will help determine how many bold,  
flashing disclaimers I can remove from the announcement. ;)

(Note that this is called *webchick's* D7 alpha hit list. Please do  
not add/remove stuff to/from this tag. If you feel something is  
drastically amiss, come find me on IRC and talk to me about it.)

2. API changes lacking documentation list:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal? 
status[]=Open&version[]=7.x&issue_tags=Needs+Documentation

Another thing that I'm really hoping to see along with the release of  
alpha 1, is a torrent of developers beginning to make good on their  
#D7CX pledges, by porting their modules and themes to Drupal 7. Right  
now, however, there are *two pages* of issues whose API changes are  
*not documented* in either the modules or theme upgrade guide. This is  
an extremely critical situation that we need to resolve *ASAP* in  
order to not stall the updates of 6.x modules to 7.x. (We all remember  
how much that 5.x -> 6.x lag was, don't we?)

If you choose to help with this (bless you!), please both edit the  
appropriate handbook page(s) for the change:

* 6.x => 7.x module upgrade guide (http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7)
* 6.x => 7.x theme upgrade guide (http://drupal.org/update/theme/6/7)

...and also cross-file issues into the Coder module queue (http://drupal.org/node/add/project-issue/coder 
) against the "Upgrade Routines" component.

Helping whittle this queue down not only will give me fewer gray hairs  
and make the D7 alpha 1 launch a huge success, but it will *also* help  
get you acclimated to the changes forthcoming in Drupal 7 *now* so  
that you are prepared when D7 is officially released in a few months.  
Plus, you can make a mean living with your brand new "Drupal 6 to 7  
module/theme porting" business. ;)

(Incidentally, I highly encourage the Drupal 8 maintainer to create a  
"Wall of Shame" for developers whose patches end up on this list for  
longer than 24 hours. ;))

3. User interface text:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal? 
status[]=Open&version[]=7.x&component[]=user+interface+text

The docs and usability teams are doing one final pass on all of the  
strings in core before we turn the translators loose on Friday. A lot  
of these require no more skill to review than the ability to read  
English. :)

Thank you all SO much in advance for your help, folks! Let's blow 'em  
all out of the water! :)

-Angie

P.S.: I am probably going to be doing a "commit freeze" starting  
Wednesday night when I go to bed, in order to give 24 hours or so for  
any follow-up bugs to be shaken out prior to rolling the release, so  
we don't accidentally break something horribly in the final hours. GULP.