Goal of D7 work on Spark?

The intention of Spark has always been to act as an incubator for D8 core improvements; we've always been extremely clear about that. The Drupal 7 distribution is a means to that end.

We used the time prior to DrupalCon Munich to get as far along in the features and functionality that we hoped to see as we could, using Drupal 7 as the base. We did this both because it provided much more stability, more pre-existing community tools to build from, and conveniently an army of Drupal users who could test the code and ideas to see if they actually worked out in the "real world."

DrupalCon Munich, though, was a critical time for the Spark project. If the community reception was extremely poor, the Spark team would continue working in contrib and essentially do no D8 core work at all, opting instead to do further feature build-out and then simply port stuff to D8 as contributed modules when it was done. If the community reception was extremely great, we would shift three full-time engineers on D8 core to help both get the changes we created in, as well as help give a huge shot in the arm to several of the initiatives (Blocks and Layouts, Mobile, etc.) that our work overlapped with and relied upon. If the reaction was mixed, we'd do something in between.

Happily the demos, BoFs, and sprints about Spark we held at Munich were extremely well-attended, and the overall enthusiasm from both end users and core developers for Spark improvements in Drupal core—even some we thought would be highly contentious, like WYSIWYG—was off the charts. We weren't totally sure what to expect, but we were both thrilled and relieved with the results.

So now that Drupal 8 feature freeze is mere weeks away, and now that we are pretty sure we won't face extreme rejection at every turn as we propose these changes for D8 core, the Spark team needs to shift its focus off of Drupal 7 and as purely onto Drupal 8 as possible. That means a stable release of the D7 Spark distro is going to have to wait until the bulk of D8 work is done, which will definitely be after feature freeze (Dec 1, 2012) and possibly even after code freeze (April 1, 2013). It will depend a lot on how much we can get done ourselves, how many other people help out, etc.

We will continue to do new feature development in Drupal 7 first, so that we can validate designs/functionality with the widest audience possible. We will also continue to incorporate community patches that help fix bugs and otherwise stabilize the code in D7 (and are also very open to co-maintainer access on various Sparkish modules if there are individuals submitting a lot of patches who seem to have a really good grasp on what's happening). I am also planning to continue releasing alphas of Spark as we finish up bi-weekly sprints in order to continue to provide transparency into what we're working on. The next alpha will contain a separated Edit/Aloha module, for example, so they can be used independently, and WYSIWYG works on both the front-end and back-end. Subsequent alphas will include things like a backported mobile toolbar from D8, image handling in WYSIWYG, and so on.

But Drupal 7 is definitely not our priority anymore, until after Drupal 8 is in much better shape than it is now. D8 has to be our main focus, at least for the forseeable future.

Hope that helps clarify things.

No problem! Thanks for asking. I should likely make this into a blog post as I'm sure you're not the only one wondering. :)

I agree, great write-up. Bookmarked it so I can point others to this with the same question :)

I agree with Wim and willmoy and would ask also for guidance to non-coders on how to help now that D7 is not the focus.