Creating a "Getting started with Drupal development" guide

Note: we have now set up a book at docs.drupaldojo.org to work on this. Please refer to this comment for more info.

Summer of Code is just around the corner, and that means an influx of new Drupal developers. These are typically folks that already know PHP, but have little to no experience with Drupal itself, nor its API.

It'd be great if the Drupal community had a guide for such people: a "QuickStart" guide to getting involved as a developer for Drupal. Not only could this help guide new SoC students in the right direction, but it would also be there for referring any new developers, regardless of the time of year. :) My thinking is that we create a handbook page (or pages), and then also give this as an "interactive" lesson at the beginning of April when the accepted SoC students are announced.

But, we need your help! The very best people to write this document are right here at the dojo: relative newbies who are starting to grasp how things work, but still remember very well the things that tripped them up as they were getting started.

Here's a sample outline, that probably needs (a lot) more fleshing out:

• Introduction
• Drupal's development philosophies (core is small and lean, additional functionality added by contrib modules, no backwards compatibility with API, etc.)
• Applying for a CVS account (tips on writing CVS applications, how the access system works)
• Working with CVS (creating a sandbox, tags and branches, etc.)
• Creating and maintaning a project
• Creating / applying patches
• Working with the issue queue
• Mailing lists (developer mailing list, documentation mailing list.. what kind of discussion takes place there)
• IRC (#drupal vs #drupal-support, #drupal-dojo, consultants and whatever other channels there are)
• Vocabulary lesson (nodes, taxonomy, blocks...)
• Overview of the hooks system (what are hooks? how do they work? what are some examples?)
• Overview of the theming system (how to override theme functions, how to define new variables in a template, what the various *.tpl.php files do...)
• Drupal's database (an E-R diagram?)
• Example module - something fairly simple and well-documented that shows people hooks in action.
• "API-like" contrib modules (Views, CCK, OG, Actions, Voting API...)

Now, a lot of this info is already in the handbook. Where possible, it's always better to link off to existing pages than write new ones. This guide could just provide additional context around those pages, so they make sense when they're being read.

I made this a wiki page, so feel free to edit it, and/or post your comments as well.