Quality Assurance on contributed code
Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here we go anyway...
I've been using Drupal now for about 3 years, and it has proved - by and large - to be most effective in enabling me to get things done I would not otherwise have been able to achieve. A powerful tool indeed, and gaining much well deserved popularity and success as a result.
There is a good deal of discussion about how best to take Drupal forward and further into the mainstream. Here's a though I have about how to make life better:
Contributed code - modules, themes, should not be listed on drupal.org until they have been assessed for quality and have at least some 'guarantee' (can't think of a better word) of ongoing support and development. Or maybe have a two tier system for contributed code (an approved/accredited tier and a 'take your chances' tier).
Two examples have impacted on me that highlight the issues here:
1. I set up a news aggregation site using Drupal about 2 years back. works pretty well, aggregates some 320 feeds and growing. But, it's built on 4.7.x code and the aggregator2 module. State of the art in its day, but the module has since died off, and I'm left with a whole lot of work to upgrade this site to 5.x or 6. The Aggregation module now appears to offer an upgrade path of sorts, and I'm now seeking to find out if there are plans to upgrade that module to support Drupal 6 (as I certainly don't wish to go down another blind alley). Having some sort of accreditation process in place for contributed code, and maybe a system whereby users of orphaned modules can club together to fund ongoing development where needed, could go a long way to improving the user experience for site builders and administrators like me.
2. I've just set up a test site using the new D6 codebase (a very big thanks to all who contributed to that), and installed the Ability theme that has just been made available for D6. It didn't work. Digging around on drupal.org it transpired that the them lacked the essential .info file that is required for all version 6 themes. Now I only wasted about an hour of my time on this one, but this could have been avoided if the theme had had to go through some sort of accreditation/approval check prior to being posted on the site.
Issues like these act as negative influences on the Drupal brand. I'm a Drupal user of several years standing and keen supporter, but newcomers might well be sufficiently turned off by experiences such as these that they stop using Drupal and turn to other tools.
If Drupal is serious about world domination then stuff like this needs to be higher on the agenda than I think it might be. I would be willing to make a modest contribution to the costs of implementing/running such a quality system along with other Drupal users, in the interests of better quality for all.
Regards
Graham
http://mc3.coop