If you want to work with Drupal, don't wait for Drupal 7. I would download and try out Drupal 6 so you can get a feel for how Drupal works and the things you can do with it.
---
"Nice to meet you Rose...run for your life." - The Doctor
My first public Drupal site - EyeOnThe503
I wouldn't worry too much about D7 just yet, essential modules have only just started to to come out of beta for D6 and it's been months since D6 release :)
__________________________________________________________________________________ www.DrupalBased.com - Showcasing Drupal Powered Sites.
I can't really understand why D7 needs to be developed right now. D6 modules are mostly not there, and introducing D7 will spread the module developer resources even thinner.
I'd recommend going with D5 if you want to add functionality beyond the basics. D6 core modules and functionality is very good, but it seems that that's all there is at the moment.
"I can't really understand why D7 needs to be developed right now."
Because D6 is done aside from bug/security fixes. Contrib and core are two different things. Core work is always ongoing. As soon as one version is out the door, work begins on the next one. Do you expect the core devs to just sit around twiddling their thumbs until the contrib devs catch up? It takes a long time to make a new core release. D7 probably won't be out until at least next summer. And then D6 will be supported until D8 comes out. It's not like D6 is going to be obsolete tomorrow.
Point is that the core itself is not very useful without the contrib. Maybe the thumb-twiddling core devs would find working on the dev/alpha stage modules refreshing? There are certain very popular modules that are as important as the core, at least from a drupal user's point of view.
It's not like there's any hurry to release another version of the core.
"It takes a long time to make a new core release."
It takes even more time for the contrib to catch up, it seems, and until that happens, D6 is hardly done. These two sides of Drupal do walk hand in hand.
As the guy who twiddles his thumb most, here is a secret: when you run Drupal any time it's more awesome than last because we spent a year, as you say, twiddling our thumbs. Yeah, contrib needs time to catch so what? D6 contrib mostly catched up and we have at least half a year to even think of releasing Drupal 7.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |
--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.
Porting a contributed module typically takes an hour or less: http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/porting-drupal-modules. It's just that during the Drupal 6 module porting cycle, the Views, CCK, Organic Groups, ImageField, ImageCache, Project, etc. maintainers all decided to spend some time doing some major refactoring of their modules... kind of all at the same time. ;) Drupal 6 is somewhat an anomaly in this area; the window from Drupal 5's release to being able to most of the contributed modules being ported was much much smaller.
Development of one Drupal release to another, on the other hand, typically takes a year or more, and is the result of coordinating hundreds of developers' contributions. It's important we start this process as early as possible.
But as a general rule, core developers are like any other contributors in the Drupal project: they work on things they find interesting (or things that someone is paying them to find interesting ;)). If you keep them from working on what they want to work on for too long (which happens during the "code freeze" stage of core development as the focus turns to stability and bug fixes rather than features), rather than a utopian, rainbow-filled world where both contributed and core developers alike magically band together and help port modules for months on end, you'd likely just end up with much fewer core developers, because they'd leave to go work on other projects where they're allowed to exercise their creativity and innovation.
It's important to keep people engaged and free to work on what they want, because that's how we keep our thriving development community that helps Drupal grow dramatically better each major release. You can't force your own "itches" upon other people.
My suggestion to you is that if porting module X is an itch for you, figure out ways that you can help. Coder module can get you 80-90% there usually, on the coding side of things (and you only need basic copy/paste/modify skills to do this). If you're not a coder, you can still help by offering to test (and following through with testing ;)) ports as they're growing nearer to completion. If you're doing efforts like this on contributed modules, feel free to drop by #drupal for help. There is a huge army of folks (including lots of core developers) who would gladly help you out if you get stuck.
Lullabot loves you
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Join us at Do It With Drupal!
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"You can't force your own "itches" upon other people."
I hope I didn't come through sounding like that :)
Thanks for the reply, WebChick, I confess I didn't fully understand the complicacy here. Anyway, I'll let my point remain as someone's not involved in the development- the separation of core and contrib is not that obvious to everybody, to me "Drupal the end product" is the sum of everything.
"My suggestion to you is that if porting module X is an itch for you, figure out ways that you can help."
That's what I need to do, obviously. And to set some things straight, I have found ways (only a few workarounds) to produce a complete site now, it was just more challenging on the module site than I thought it would be 9 months after the core release, and before Views release it wasn't really feasible. But you already named the reason.
Including Views into core has probably been discussed already, but in my opinion it would make sense.
utopian, rainbow-filled world where both contributed and core developers alike magically band together and help port modules for months on end
In this beautiful world with gentle birdsong and lovely flowers the would also be a more coherent Drupal, an open source project that appears well co-ordinated with emphasis on end product instead of developer desires ;-)
Comments
There is no set date. If you
There is no set date.
If you want to work with Drupal, don't wait for Drupal 7. I would download and try out Drupal 6 so you can get a feel for how Drupal works and the things you can do with it.
---
"Nice to meet you Rose...run for your life." - The Doctor
My first public Drupal site - EyeOnThe503
Thank you for the
Thank you for the information. I am learning to use Drupal 6.6 now and I am excited about it. Though the menu is daunting, really.
I wouldn't worry too much
I wouldn't worry too much about D7 just yet, essential modules have only just started to to come out of beta for D6 and it's been months since D6 release :)
__________________________________________________________________________________
www.DrupalBased.com - Showcasing Drupal Powered Sites.
I can't really understand
I can't really understand why D7 needs to be developed right now. D6 modules are mostly not there, and introducing D7 will spread the module developer resources even thinner.
I'd recommend going with D5 if you want to add functionality beyond the basics. D6 core modules and functionality is very good, but it seems that that's all there is at the moment.
.
"I can't really understand why D7 needs to be developed right now."
Because D6 is done aside from bug/security fixes. Contrib and core are two different things. Core work is always ongoing. As soon as one version is out the door, work begins on the next one. Do you expect the core devs to just sit around twiddling their thumbs until the contrib devs catch up? It takes a long time to make a new core release. D7 probably won't be out until at least next summer. And then D6 will be supported until D8 comes out. It's not like D6 is going to be obsolete tomorrow.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
I know all that. Point is
I know all that.
Point is that the core itself is not very useful without the contrib. Maybe the thumb-twiddling core devs would find working on the dev/alpha stage modules refreshing? There are certain very popular modules that are as important as the core, at least from a drupal user's point of view.
It's not like there's any hurry to release another version of the core.
"It takes a long time to make a new core release."
It takes even more time for the contrib to catch up, it seems, and until that happens, D6 is hardly done. These two sides of Drupal do walk hand in hand.
thumb twiddling for sure
As the guy who twiddles his thumb most, here is a secret: when you run Drupal any time it's more awesome than last because we spent a year, as you say, twiddling our thumbs. Yeah, contrib needs time to catch so what? D6 contrib mostly catched up and we have at least half a year to even think of releasing Drupal 7.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |
--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.
Porting a contributed module
Porting a contributed module typically takes an hour or less: http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/porting-drupal-modules. It's just that during the Drupal 6 module porting cycle, the Views, CCK, Organic Groups, ImageField, ImageCache, Project, etc. maintainers all decided to spend some time doing some major refactoring of their modules... kind of all at the same time. ;) Drupal 6 is somewhat an anomaly in this area; the window from Drupal 5's release to being able to most of the contributed modules being ported was much much smaller.
Development of one Drupal release to another, on the other hand, typically takes a year or more, and is the result of coordinating hundreds of developers' contributions. It's important we start this process as early as possible.
But as a general rule, core developers are like any other contributors in the Drupal project: they work on things they find interesting (or things that someone is paying them to find interesting ;)). If you keep them from working on what they want to work on for too long (which happens during the "code freeze" stage of core development as the focus turns to stability and bug fixes rather than features), rather than a utopian, rainbow-filled world where both contributed and core developers alike magically band together and help port modules for months on end, you'd likely just end up with much fewer core developers, because they'd leave to go work on other projects where they're allowed to exercise their creativity and innovation.
It's important to keep people engaged and free to work on what they want, because that's how we keep our thriving development community that helps Drupal grow dramatically better each major release. You can't force your own "itches" upon other people.
My suggestion to you is that if porting module X is an itch for you, figure out ways that you can help. Coder module can get you 80-90% there usually, on the coding side of things (and you only need basic copy/paste/modify skills to do this). If you're not a coder, you can still help by offering to test (and following through with testing ;)) ports as they're growing nearer to completion. If you're doing efforts like this on contributed modules, feel free to drop by #drupal for help. There is a huge army of folks (including lots of core developers) who would gladly help you out if you get stuck.
Lullabot loves you
--------------------------------------
Join us at Do It With Drupal!
A large scale, curated education event
December 10-12, New Orleans
Good points
"You can't force your own "itches" upon other people."
I hope I didn't come through sounding like that :)
Thanks for the reply, WebChick, I confess I didn't fully understand the complicacy here. Anyway, I'll let my point remain as someone's not involved in the development- the separation of core and contrib is not that obvious to everybody, to me "Drupal the end product" is the sum of everything.
"My suggestion to you is that if porting module X is an itch for you, figure out ways that you can help."
That's what I need to do, obviously. And to set some things straight, I have found ways (only a few workarounds) to produce a complete site now, it was just more challenging on the module site than I thought it would be 9 months after the core release, and before Views release it wasn't really feasible. But you already named the reason.
Including Views into core has probably been discussed already, but in my opinion it would make sense.
http://drupal.org/node/286665
utopian, rainbow-filled world where both contributed and core developers alike magically band together and help port modules for months on end
In this beautiful world with gentle birdsong and lovely flowers the would also be a more coherent Drupal, an open source project that appears well co-ordinated with emphasis on end product instead of developer desires ;-)
cheers.jon