Welcome to the fourth edition of this week in Drupal core!
What's new in Drupal 8?
This week saw a large number of bug fixes and cleanup task as we work hard cleaning up our APIs and codebase for a beta release. The next alpha (alpha4) is slated for October 18th since it has been a while since alpha3 was released and also in order to have something stable to port modules from during the various sprints/sessions at BADCamp. There are still some remaining issues we’d like to see in the alpha4 so help is always appreciated.
Notable Commits
The best of git log --since "1 week ago" --pretty=oneline (123 commits in total):
- Issue #2109601 by tim.plunkett, benjy: Update MAINTAINERS.txt for block.module - great to have more maintainers come on board. Trivia Question - benjy brings the total number of Australian based core maintainers to four. Can you name them?
- Issue #1757452 by amateescu, Xano, chx: Support config entities in entity reference fields. This opens up more data-modelling opportunities for Drupal.
- Issue #2004626 by plach, kfritsche, vijaycs85, Pancho, penyaskito: Make non-configurable field translation settings available in the content language settings. Where built-in properties got support for translatability configuration as well. This is now only implemented for node titles, but will expand to other node properties very easily soon. Still more to go in entity translation, but this was an important step.
Important API and data model changes
Commits that stabilize our API and data model, moving us closer to a Drupal 8 beta.
- Issue #1589176 by nod_: Fixed Use data-* to store #states api informations
- Issue #2101709 by tstoeckler: Remove the bundle_prefix concept from the entity
- Issue #2095399 by Berdir: Merge DatabaseStorageController and DatabaseStorageControllerNGsystem.
Hardening our APIs
One of the primary use cases for the CMI initiative is to allow export and import of configuration. Until recently we were testing these in isolation or for a single site but now thanks to some lateral thinking by chx we have test coverage for exporting and importing between two distinct installs. Also we now have UUIDs on all default configuration which means the migrate initiative (IMP) is now unblocked.
- Issue #2106171 by chx, webchick: Write tests for configuration deployment scenarios.
- Issue #1969800 by swentel, mtift, tayzlor, chx, xjm, herom: Add UUIDs to default configuration.
- Issue #2023563 by Berdir, smiletrl, fago: Convert entity field types to the field_type plugin.
User experience (UX) improvements
Drupal 8 makes great strides in improving the user experience for administrators, site builders, content authors, and end users. Here's a sampling of some of the small fixes that are adding up to a big UX boost:
- Issue #2072533 by swentel: Group together 'Decimal', 'Float' and 'Integer' in the field type drop-down menu.
- Issue #1851414 by nod_, quicksketch, frega, dawehner, damiankloip: Convert Views to use the abstracted dialog modal. A big win, now all of our dialogs use the same API so any a11y or otherwise issues only need to be fixed in one place.
Drupal 8 Around the Interwebs
Blog posts about Drupal 8 and other related lint.
- Slightly old but still relevant: @socketwench details some things to be aware of that were discovered whilst porting Flag module to PSR-0.
- ServerGrove hosting present an overview of the symfony routing component giving a detailed breakdown of what’s under the hood of Drupal 8 (via Symfony Planet).
- Liran Tal’s part 4 in Drupal 8 module development dealing with creating a settings file.
- Drupal 8 Won’t kill your kittens - part one, two and three of a four-part series on DX wins in Drupal 8 by Jeffrey McGuire.
- Kat Bailey’s post on why writing loosely coupled code equals a better DX.
- Pixeljet talk about why they often favour Symfony2 over Drupal 7, relevant for Drupal 8.
- Cathy Theys has started compiling a list of live D8 sites.
Drupal 8 in "Real Life"
- October 24-27: BADCamp 2013 is next week! The four-day event includes lots of great Drupal 8 content for site builders, module authors, and core contributors, plus a full-day core summit on October 27. Also don't miss the extended sprints which run from October 21 all the way through to October 29. The teams for Views, Configuration, Multilingual, Web Services, Documentation, Usability, Media, and Twig all need your help to make Drupal 8 awesome! Sign up now.
Other important dates in the next couple of weeks
- October 19 DrupalCamp Atlanta includes sessions on Twig in core, Creating a Blog in Drupal 8 & the Configuration API, and agentrickard's great Drupal 8 overview, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Drupal 8.
- November 1 Session submissions close for DrupalSouth, Asia Pacific's biggest Drupal conference, get your sessions in.
- November 7th 6-9pm (GMT+11) Drupal 8 Tour Writing sprint in Sydney Australia. See the event page for more details.
Keep watching the queues!