roadmap

Getting Stuff Done

Basically, an initial patch went in, we opened followup issues for cleanup, the followup issues never got followed up, so what's in HEAD is a bit of a mess. — catch, in a recent issue comment

This happens far too often. I'm not linking to the specific issue in the Drupal 7 queue because I don't want to point fingers; this suffices to exemplify my point.

I wasn't anywhere near the sausage factory back when Drupal 6 was coming out, so I've no idea if this is a problem that's getting worse, but I feel this is a problem that happens a lot, and that it needs to happen a lot less.

I think that our move to distributed version control may help, as we can leave new developments on a branch until everything is cleaned up (and documented!), but as everyone knows, technological solutions are no substitute for good communication and organization.

Ultimately, we need people to take on the roles of roadmappers and project managers.

This is apparently a dirty word; there is a widespread notion that you can't organize volunteers. I can with confidence state that this is utter rubbish, because I've done it, and volunteer organizations around the world do it.

It's maybe harder because it's online rather than face to face (we do it fairly well at code sprints, after all), and maybe harder because we're mostly a bunch of fairly headstrong smart people who are used to managing our own activities (which is one of the things that makes us good programmers). But we clearly recognize the need to be organized on a smaller scale, and the need to work with rules. Managing Core is going to be a mammoth task, of which we are right to be apprehensive, but is it so different to what we already do?

Regardless, it is necessary, and I think we are also of necessity often pragmatists. This is one occasion we need to recognize the need for some medicine that in some cases might not be entirely to our palate.

Spoonful of sugar anyone?

Small Core, Big Drupal, Tighter Contrib: Outer Core?

I've been mulling this idea since Paris, trying to figure out the best way to present it.

But basically:

We want a smaller, slimmer, efficient core.
But we also want Drupal to, like, be useful.
We want contrib, at least the high-use end of contrib, to be smoother, more organized, released on time with core.
It's been suggested we have a contrib maintainer, who would have the unenviable task of managing a huge kaboodle.

So on the one hand we want to move things out of core, into contrib: things like poll, blog, even forum and profile. However, moving out to contrib is currently recognized as being a death sentence for the code itself, and dooming users to the curse of a million Lego bricks (to quote webchick).

On the other hand, we want better underpinning for the contrib modules that really make Drupal what it is: views, CCK (what's left of it out of core), panels, flag, voting, token, and so on.

These two things actually seem the same to me: define an Outer Core. This would be a fairly loose collection of modules, not simply the 40 most popular, but those that provide important functions, play well together. Outer Core would get a maintainer or two, to ensure good use of APIs, generalization and abstraction of common code where possible, no duplication of code or features, and plan releases.

Drupal the framework would be just the core.
Drupal the product would be core + outer core. We'd release both simultaneously, available as a single download.

End result, I hope: we tame a sizable part of the Big Lego Brick Box.

Subscribe to RSS - roadmap