There is currently no available release of Drupal 8 on the core project page. This is because Drupal 8 does not exist. However, there exist API documentation and discussions referring to Drupal 8. What they instead refer to is Drupal X, the experimental version of Drupal. (Literally, a version of Drupal that is being used to experiment upon.)

As reported, the official references to Drupal 8 imply to new users that they must make a choice between using Drupal 8 over Drupal 7. This choice does not exist, as Drupal 8 does not exist. There is no choice between using a full version and an experimental build; the intention of using a full version is to produce a website, the intention of using an experimental version is to produce a full version.

Eventually, the full version Drupal 8 alpha will be branched off the experimental version by Dries. Once that arrives, new users will have a real choice between Drupal 7 stable and 8 alpha, and the tradeoffs of that choice will be clear to them.

Comments

mathieuhelie’s picture

mathieuhelie commented
Project: Drupal core » Drupal.org site moderators
Version: 8.x-dev »
Component: user interface text » Textual improvements

Moving this to webmaster queue as recommended.

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented
Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Drupal core
Version: » 8.x-dev
Component: Textual improvements » documentation

Moving back to Drupal Core as this is something the core maintainers/Dries would have to decide on.

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
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Primary language English
commented
Title: Rename Drupal 8 to Drupal X » Make it clearer that Drupal 8.x is in development and not ready

I'm sorry, but we've had a tradition for the entire many years of the drupal project of using the next number to name the "version in progress", and I don't think it's going to change now. It's also common in other software projects.

But there probably could be an update to the contents of the Drupal project page to make this clear, or a link to a documentation page that explains it.

RobW’s picture

RobW commented

"Drupal.next"

All kidding aside, I think most people that are looking at the api are comfortable with Drupal enough that they know the state of the version(s) they're working with.

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
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Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I added this note to the one reference on the Drupal project page (http://drupal.org/project/drupal) which mentioned Drupal 8 (near the bottom).

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.