[Maintainers-news] Drupal 7 coming, project, CVS and translation changes

[maintainers-news at drupal.org]

It is that time again! Drupal 7 is nearing completion, drupal.org project
spaces were redesigned and we are switching version control systems. There
are lots of new things to learn, and great new opoortunities to use. We'd
like to inform you about these developments, so you are best equipped.

-------- DRUPAL 7 IS AROUND THE CORNER  
---------------------------------------

Drupal 7.0 RC1 was just released on December 1st, 2010. This means a release
is not far off, perhaps as soon as 7-10 days from now. Moshe Weitzman started
off the Drupal 7 Contrib Experience (D7CX) movement almost one and a half
years ago with the goal to get as many contributed modules ported to Drupal 7
as possible by the time Drupal 7.0 is released. This among other factors lead
to the availability of over 700 modules for Drupal 7 (compared to 7000
overall) - at varying levels of completeness.

There is of course more work to do, and you might have one or two modules or
themes not ported yet. We have documentation detailing all the changes in the
API with before/after examples for most items. The Coder module is of great
help in this migration as well, and now it includes the Coder Upgrade module,
which attempts to do automated code conversion for you. If you made a D7CX
pledge, this week is the time to tag your final release.

Related links:

  * Drupal 7.0 RC1 release: http://drupal.org/node/985946
  * D7CX announcement: http://cyrve.com/d7cx
  * D7CX progress tracking: http://d7cx.com/
  * Converting modules to 7.x: http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7
  * Coder module: http://drupal.org/project/coder

-------- DRUPAL.ORG PROJECT SPACES GET NEW FEATURES  
--------------------------

You probably already noticed that drupal.org was redesigned earlier this
year. If you have not seen that already, now is the time to pause reading and
go wander around on the new site!

The redesign affected project spaces as well. Here are some tips to use the
new features more effectively:

  1) Each project now has a 'Maintenance status' and a 'Development status'
     flag, which you can use to inform users about the state of your work.
     Categories are also prominently displayed now. These are all good to
     provide users with the information necessary to choose the right modules.
     Make sure to set yours properly.
  2) There is entirely new maintainer management for each project! You'll see
     the 'Maintainers' tab on projects you own, which now allows you to add
     maintainers inline and grant fine grained permissions like 'maintain
     issues' or 'edit project' separately.
  3) The new dashboard on drupal.org helps you keep tabs on your project
     issues. You can add a block with all issues you are involved in (across
     all projects) or individual project issue overviews.

-------- CVS IS BEING REPLACED WITH GIT  
--------------------------------------

Drupal.org is moving off of CVS for project version control! The Drupal
Association sponsored the project to help move drupal.org to a more modern
system enabling the community to do even smoother collaboration. Your new
helper will be git (originally written to manage the Linux kernel code). The
team is hard at work to accomplish the migration before Drupalcon Chicago.
Mid-Februrary is the tentative launch date.

What does moving to git mean for Drupal.org? Read more at
http://groups.drupal.org/node/106224

We made the existing source of drupal.org projects available under
git.drupal.org in a ready-only mode, so you can use it to roll patches or
just check out code already.

It's very important to understand that the migration will not be a gradual
process - when the flip is switched, CVS will become instantly read-only, and
git will replace it entirely. So the sooner you familiarize yourself with
git, the better! Get books for the holidays, read some great tutorials. Here
are some of our tips:

  * http://gitref.org/
  * http://gitready.com/
  * http://book.git-scm.com/
  * http://www.archive.org/details/GitFundamentals
  * http://peepcode.com/products/git
  * http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-git-migration-team

-------- TRANSLATIONS DECOUPLING FROM PROJECTS  
-------------------------------

Translations have long been an integral part of the drupal.org project space,
using the same CVS version control system and issue queues. Drupal core
translations had their own projects and distinct project translations (think
Views, Fivestar, etc) got their .po files hosted with the projects
themselves.

This resulted in a long list of issues, including translators needing to know
CVS or project maintainers needing to distinguish between an outdated
translation and an updated one. It is a burden for project maintainers to
generate translation templates and keep them up to date, and there is no
opportunity for translators to keep their translations complete with project
releases. Finally, the tools were missing to maintain an up to date
translation database on actual Drupal sites with module updates and removals.

This is all changing since we are decoupling translations from the module,
theme and installation profile projects themselves. What does this mean for
you?

A. If you are a translation maintainer: you've already been contacted, and
your team is in the process of moving from drupal.org to localize.drupal.org.

B. If you are a translator: stop working on .po files in CVS (either for
Drupal core or contrib), instead import existing .po files from CVS to
localize.drupal.org (if not already), remove the imported file from CVS and
work on localize.drupal.org from now on.

C. If you are a drupal.org project maintainer: do not accept .po files
anymore in your issue queues and remove your .pot files from CVS; tell people
to use localize.drupal.org.

For more background information, follow the news feed for localize.drupal.org
at http://localize.drupal.org/news

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We hope these news items were useful for you. We wish you happy holidays, and
looking forward to an even more eventful 2011.

Yours, The Drupal.org infrastructure team