project module

One part of my GSoC is to add support (of some sort) to VersionControl API for having multiple branches within a project (like a drupal.org project) with different user permissions. The idea is to allow a more DVCS-like workflow, where people can work independently on their own branch and then request an admin user to pull their changes into the master repository. I won't be starting this for a few weeks, but I wanted to get a discussion going about what it should look like.

After reading dman's Open Letter I started to think about how module management on d.o can be improved. Not just to identify duplicated modules, but also regarding dependencies and incompatibilities.

With the absolutely fantastic growth in the number of contributed modules for Drupal it is quickly becoming more difficult to navigate through them, both to find a module that suites the needs and information about if it may create problems with modules already installed. Often this require quite a bit of research through various issue queues, forum threads and so on.

http://drupal.org/project/content_access
http://drupal.org/project/nodeaccess
I think there are some more access / permission UI modules but those two look for me nearly absolutely identical except content_access uses ACL for user permissions.

BTW: I see sometimes a block "Recommendation: Related projects" when accessing projects.. who is maintaining those information? Is it automatically tag based? Because in both cases each other isn't showing up.

I've created a javascript which adds plain-text links to issues for easy copy / paste into issue comments. For information, see the handbook page. But this brings up a topic for the redesign - what functions or features are missing which would be useful to developers? I'm sure many of them belong in project.module, but obviously how they are implemented would affect the redesign :)

I have just re-discovered the http://drupal.org/project/issues/statistics in d.o's user menu. Below of the overall project statistics you get a nice overview of total issues by project and status. After clicking through the pages and changing the table sorting to Total, and while still looking at rather meaningless statistics, this idea crossed my mind:

The giants of the project module and Drupal.org's CVS/packaging system (dww, hunmonk, aclight) plan to add the ability of installation profiles to have their modules packaged with them, I understand. This will be a huge step forward for their value to end users.

A new website just opened to the public today called DrupalModules.com. Go check it out!

There are some very cool features, something that the Community has needed for a while.

http://drupalmodules.com/

Hi there,

I am working on a drupal project and need help from an expert drupal developer. The idea is to create a number of custom modules. I would like to work together with some one that has good experience and knows the drupal framework very well. This is a side project, not a full time project. The project has huge growing potential. I will explain all the details in person.

If someone is interested please contact me via my personal contact form at http://groups.drupal.org/user/15781/contact.

Thanks

Some of you may have seen Kieran Lal's pitch to the Drupal community to help get Derek Wright (dww) and Chad Phillips (hunmonk) to DrupalCon Boston to work on the crucial Project* modules, and many of you chipped in to help Derek and Chad reach their goals. But the project* team can still use your help!

Adam Light (aclight on Drupal.org) is also trying to get to DrupalCon to work on Project*, and trust me, it will be worth ten times whatever you can give. I have only had limited interactions with Adam, who I don't know personally, but even those limited interactions have blown my socks off. Adam was a tireless volunteer for the GHOP program, and his work with these students was truly out of this world (take a look at any of the GHOP issues that Adam helped out with and you'll see what I'm referring to). As Webchick noted on her blog post asking for help for Adam and Jimmy "boombatower" Berry: "Adam was the one primarily carrying the torch during the latter half of the GHOP program, and was critical to ensuring its success."

I happened upon a blog post Adam wrote in which he requested assistance on the DrupalCon Boston feed, and I think that Adam is a bit too modest to post his request here, so that's why I'm writing this. Here's how Adam describes his contributions to Drupal:

I found this coming in from Drupal planet http://www.tech-wanderings.com/drupal-nofollowed-too-pervasive.

Greg Holsclaw talks about how nofollow attributes could be hurting Drupal (rel=nofollow being a well intentioned way of deterring spam. Something that has managed to keep the ratio of spam to real content on the web down to a respectable 10:1 :P) Basically, he points out that most internal links on drupal.org get the nofollow attribute attached to them.

Greg makes a number of good points, but I think the two most important are: