Fun with Drupal Make

After the discussion on KWALL's standard module set, I decided I wanted an easier way to get them in place. I mean, it's not really that hard to type drush dl module1 module2 module3 ad_nauseum..., but where am I going to keep a text file of a list of modules to paste into that command? I decided I'd (finally) build a Drush Make file to take care of all of it. I thought I'd share what I came up with.

Since I use Drush on a daily basis, but I didn't have any experience with Drush Make, I started with an article from Lullabot: Drush Make and PressFlow. (I've used PressFlow for a few of the sites I've built, since it has a number of performance enhancements, so I thought this was a great place to start.) The article highlighted a few tricks that make using Drush Make even nicer. Not only can you use it to install a complete site with Drupal core (or PressFlow) and contributed modules, but you can even have it download and install the code libraries needed for some of the modules (like jQuery_UI and TinyMCE).

So I started with the example make file from the article and added all the modules from our previous list (plus a few more that I use on a regular basis). I put together versions for PressFlow (with support for memcache, Varnish, and Solr) and standard Drupal. If you've got Drush working, all you need to do is create and enter a new directory and type drush make /path/to/drupal-full.make to download and extract everything for you. Man this is easy!