Posted by jacobson on October 21, 2010 at 1:52am
I recently installed Alpha 14 and created a Drupal 7 Beta 1 platform. I tried to create a site and did not see my D7B1 platform. I thought that Aegir was somehow not seeing the platform. Eventually, I realized that Aegir only shows the platforms that match the profile selected on the Site creation form. Well, that is not obvious.
The Site Creation form should show all Platforms but disable (grey out, if possible) those that are not applicable to the profile chosen. Alternatively, the current behavior should be reversed. Aegir should show only those profiles that apply to the platform chosen.
HAJ
Comments
I seem to think that could be
I seem to think that could be a good way to do it as well, not sure how big of a database change that would be. I know from what i am building it could make a difference as well. Seeing as with setting profiles that are overridable as you go down the chain, having a chain that is clear is important ie:
Server -> Platform -> Profile
We used to have it the other
We used to have it the other way around until 0.4alpha9 when it was reversed. The new logic is based on the idea that you don't select $SomePlatform and then the profile, because the profile is the key part that matters. A platform is circumstantial. just a build that supports that type of site. You want to install an OpenAtrium site, you choose the OpenAtrium profile, and you're given a list of available openatrium-supported platforms to put it on.
It's a much debated change, there was a survey thrown up in the issue queue (struggling to find a link for it), and the results were in favour of the new logic.
Granted, these days it does cause confusion for some users who are used to the opposite paradigm (that 'platforms' are important and also often in these users' cases, somewhat static, the site doesn't move around between platforms much)
The confusion is made worse thanks to Drupal 7 where some users aren't aware that d7's install profiles are named Standard, Minimal and Testing, contrasting with just 'Drupal' for d6 platforms, so they get lost in the form looking for 'Drupal 7' instead.
I don't see it getting reversed again to the old way, but I also don't disagree that the form could do with much usability improvements to help with this issue. The fact remains that there'll always be some confusion here because a) not all users think in the same paradigm of 'Profile first, Platform second' and b) the stark difference between d6 and d7's install profile names
Understood, So How About . . .
Mig5. I get the logic. How about a line or two of text guiding the user that the Platforms shown are those applicable to the Profile?
Thanks.
HAJ
A good idea. Let me know what
A good idea. Let me know what you think of the description here: http://i.imgur.com/1uM8q.png
If people feel it makes things easier to understand, I'll certainly commit :)
Updated wording
Updated wording http://imgur.com/t1pzv.png
Maybe we could add to this
Maybe we could add to this Install Profiles description a word about D7 profiles? I tried to find how/where can I add on the fly (on the display only) prefixes, so those profiles would be listed as: "Drupal 7 Standard" etc. but nothing worked for me. Any advice?
I did so, see
I did so, see http://i.imgur.com/9q3Rd.png
However, I didn't commit it because it's total kludge in the site form, which is already rather slow with everything it's trying to do. This is why I hesitate - the Aegir project ends up filled with these little corner-case hacks for 'usability' which are, at the end of the day, written only as a reaction to d7 making our lives hard :)
I did however commit and push the description text stuff.
Subject for further discussion, I don't think this one is going to go away.
Please share a patch :) as I
Please share a patch :) as I doubt d7 core will change that weird profiles naming soon.
That's part of the problem -
That's part of the problem - consider the case of Drupal (6.x) there - I realised that would appear for drupal 5 platform's default profile too, as the name is the same, and Aegir simply doesn't care, it just recognises identical package names (single namespace)
So it's only going to happen again with d8: if d8 ships with Standard, Testing, Minimal profiles, you couldn't have them all suffixed with (7.x) as that would be false. All I was doing there was matching profile names and suffixing the versions, and that's just not going to work at all, so I don't want to even offer a patch for that.
I'm thus not convinced at all that we can do things to that form any further to ease the confusion. Documentation instead should be developed to help there - usability is just one thing.
Either that or we revert the paradigm of profile > platform back to platform > profile.
(or we toughen up a bit and stop being confused by it :) which would of course be great in a perfect world )
Looks Good
This looks good. Certainly would have avoided my confusion. Thanks.
HAJ
It was discussed already in detail
The survey thread: http://drupal.org/node/858280
The discussion (and links to other threads): http://drupal.org/node/937490
I believe the d7 weird (too generic) naming for profiles is now the main problem.
We can optimize the UX in the Create Site form as much as we can, but we can't change the names of profiles - well, unless we will introduce something like custom extended naming and we will add "d7" suffix to all d7 install profiles. This would be however not the best option, since those names are really too generic and you could end up with some other distro using "Standard" as a name for its own profile(s) for any reason which could add even more confusion.