Workflow development timeline

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mfredrickson's picture

Hello everyone,

Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Fredrickson and John VanDyke was recently kind enough to make me a maintainer of the workflow module. We've sketched out a basic timeline for the workflow module and I'd like to share it with you. The long term goal is, of course, moving a configurable workflow system into core, but there are a lof smaller milestones we must hit first.

Milestone 1: 4.7-1.0 Releaes

With the recent change to contributed module releases, it is important that workflow release an official 4.7 series snapshot. Only modules with official snapshots are listed on the compatibility pages, so just having a dev branch is not good enough anymore.

While I think workflow is very stable, and could easily be released today, I'd like to use this opportunity to clean up the workflow issue queue. My priorities for tickets are as follows:

  1. Any issue marked as Ready to Be Committed (RTBC)
  2. Bugs (of any severity) with patches needing review
  3. Feature requests with patches needing review
  4. Critical bugs without patches, or with patches needing work

I strongly suspect any issues that do not fall into these four categories will not be dealt with. Of course, you can bump your particular feature or issue up the ladder by filing or reviewing patches. If you are not a PHP coder, detailed instructions how to reproduce will also get priority.

There are some old bugs in the workflow queue. I would like to have every issue closed or postponed by the time the 1.0 branch hits. Tentatively I'm planning on making the official release on 12/26. There is also a high chance that this branch will end development on 4.7.

Milestone 2: Drupal 5.0-1.0 release

After the 4.7-1.0 release hits, and we close development on 4.7, it's time to get a Drupal 5 branch ready. While ambitious, I'd like to target the 5.0 branch for January 1, 2007. This release will probably include no new features and no UI improvements. Our goals should be to just get it working under 5.0.

Milestone 3: Drupal 5.0-2.x-dev/HEAD

Now it starts to get fun again. :-)

The 5.0-2.x-dev branch will open workflow up to new features and bug fixes. I am most interested in seeing usability and UI improvements in this branch. Some possible avenues for investigation might be:

  • Drupal 5.0 ships with jQuery. How can we use it to improve managing workflows (without relying on it exclusively)?
  • How can we better visualize workflows? SVG/.dot graphs come to mind. What else can we do?
  • Where can we add useful information to workflow use and management? Example: Named transitions
  • Would it possible to reuse states between workflows? Does this help? (Example: if you want a view of "under editorial review" nodes in views, and you have 3 workflows with the state, you have to select all 3 in views. Yuck).
  • If I have a node in state x, and I want to transition to state z, with state y in the middle, lets make this easier. Having to do two (or more) page refreshes is painful.

Of course there are many more options.

Rewriting workflow for core

If it is clean enough, Dries had said he would like to include a configurable workflow system in core. To do this, we will probably need to break workflow down into smaller pieces and work to get each included into core. This could be the subject for an entire additional post, so I'm not going to say much on this subject just yet.

Summary

Thanks for reading this long post. Remember, promote issues in the queue if you want them fixed/implemented for 4.7. Otherwise, you'll have no choice but to upgrade to 5.0 (oh the horror!).

Feel free to bother me on IRC (mfredrickson in #drupal) or comment on this post if you have questions or comments.

Take care!

Comments

Milestone 1: Complete

mfredrickson's picture

As of 5 minutes ago, I released the 4.7-1.0 release of workflow, thus completing the first milestone (only a few days behind schedule, not bad).

This effectively closes development on 4.7 - except for major bug fixes.

Next up: Milestone 2 - drupal 5 compatability release. I'll be making a drupal 5 branch in the next few days. I'll follow up here with more news.

Cheers,
-M

great

fago's picture

it's great to see someone working on workflow again. thanks!

Milestone 2: Drupal 5.0-1.0 release

TallDavid's picture

Mark,
for those of us anxiously awaiting the Workflow Drupal 5.0-1.0 release, could you please provide an update. Thanks!

Feb 3?

mfredrickson's picture

I'm as irritated as anyone that I haven't had the time to get workflow updated to 5.

I will have time this Saturday at the latest, and I'm reserving it for workflow. I might have time before then, but by Saturday for sure.

Cheers,
-M

Hooray for Mark and Pajunas!

discursives-gdo's picture

You guys rock!

I love the workflow module!

sebastianrs's picture

I love the workflow module! And I am attentively awaiting the upgrade to Drupal 5.0! I hope this will be done soon.
Thanks

Milestone 3: Drupal 5.0-2.x-dev/HEAD

mfredrickson's picture

With the release of workflow for 5.x it's time to start looking at the 2.x branch and HEAD.

During the 4.7-1.0 release sprint, I postponed a lot of issues in the queue. It's probably time to start going back to those and getting them updated to the appropriate version and branch.

If anyone is looking for a job, go through the workflow queue and move tickets from postponed to active. Your reward is that you get to make the issues and features you like higher priority. Oh, and patches are extremely welcome.

Cheers,
-Mark

workflow in core

moshe weitzman's picture

now tha actions is in, lets push for workflow in D7? we need a plan of attack.

workflow-ng?

fago's picture

I'd be interested in feedback on workflow-ng and it's concept. Imho it's not far away from the goal :)

However I still need to do some work to polish the usual document publishing use case, but right now the 1.0beta2 should suffice to get its concept (rule-based!).

Workflow

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