Configuring the menu for control panel module -- how to alias?

No need to alias anything to get this to work.

First, there's a patch for core system.module to allow you to define the "home" page for admin. 4.7 patch and 4.6 patch. After applying this patch you will see a new option in admin/settings that will allow you change the default admin home page. I'm hoping the 4.7 patch makes it into the core 4.7 release.

As for the child items not showing? Have you set the "Build Child Menu Panels" option in admin/settings/controlpanel?

I attempted to apply the patch to the latest 4.7 release (4.7b2), and it failed with this message:

patch -p0 -u -b < default_admin.patch
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file index.php
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file includes/menu.inc
Hunk #1 succeeded at 356 (offset -4 lines).
(Stripping trailing CRs from patch.)
patching file modules/system.module
Hunk #1 succeeded at 103 (offset 1 line).
patch: **** malformed patch at line 98: @@ -257,6 +263,10 @@

I then attempted a manual patch in system.module. While drupal still continues to function, the admin pages appear inside the site's usual template. As far as I can tell, I've followed the instructions in the readme and in the forums, so I believe this is a case of updated 4.7b2 code breaking the control panel's functionality.

Nice module, BTW - the screenshots look great :-). I'm trying to convince one of my clients to switch from producing CMS based sites in Joomla to Drupal, and this will go a looooong way to accomplishing that (once I get it working).

What do you mean by:

While drupal still continues to function, the admin pages appear inside the site's usual template

The Control Panel module does not affect the template in use. It only shows menu items graphically with icons. The patches referenced in this post ONLY allows you to change the default view when the /admin menu item is clicked. By default you get the watchdog log view. The patch allows you to change the view to anything you want. The patch does NOT affect the template in use.

Insert the following lines in controlpanel.css :

div.control-panel-icon-size-48x48 {
padding: 0 1.00em 0 1.00em;
}
div.control-panel-icon-size-36x36 {
padding: 0 1.20em 0 1.20em;
}
div.control-panel-icon-size-24x24 {
padding: 0 1.40em 0 1.40em;
}
div.control-panel-icon-size-16x16 {
padding: 0 1.60em 0 1.60em;
}

Result:
Better control of would be away between the pictures.

so what should we do if we want to enable this in 4.7 beta 3? the patch is against an obsolete version of cvs.

You could manually apply the patch or the alias option works in the latest CVS HEAD (not beta 3) so it will also work in future betas and the 4.7 release.