I have noticed that there are two different terms being using for conceptually the same thing. On this page http://drupal.org/project/installation+profiles installation profiles and on this page http://drupal.org/node/326175 the same thing is referred to as distributions. On the second page an installation profile is even called a "customized 'distribution'...". Why not just use the term distribution which conveys something familiar to a lot of people and avoid the confusion of using these two different terms in a seemingly interchangeable way?

Furthermore, the content of these two pages overlaps. They both include lists of distributions/installation profiles and not much else. If one is to serve as a list of what already exists why not put all the content relevant to such a page in one place? And where is there a page with a general overview and guidelines for creating an installation profile/distribution? Someone who does not know much about a distribution but is thinking of creating one would greatly benefit from such a document rather than having to learn just from looking at what others have done. Not only would improved documentation make creating distributions easier, but it would also help to make sure that they follow the principles of the Drupal community.

To this end, I have begun working on and have sections of documentation for someone new (or not new) to Drupal who is thinking of creating their own distribution. I would like to know if I missed something and this actually already exists somewhere. If it does, where? If it does not, where should I create this page?

P.S. I was not totally sure whether this was supposed to be a issue report or forum discussion although it appears maybe it was supposed to be an issue report. If someone has the ability he/she can remove the forum post http://drupal.org/node/552876 .

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

In my understanding, the two are not the same - rather they are cause and effect: installation profiles allow one to create custom 'distributions' of Drupal. Per the Installation profile link:

This will allow customized "distributions" that enable and configure a set of modules that work together for a specific kind of site

The second link refers to 'Distribution profiles' because it is a link to the group on groups.drupal.org which shares the same unfortunate name. I don't know why it was called 'Distribution profiles' - the name is clunky, inconsistent and indeed confusing.

Installation Profiles make distributions. Cause and effect.

Furthermore, the content of these two pages overlaps. They both include lists of distributions/installation profiles and not much else. If one is to serve as a list of what already exists why not put all the content relevant to such a page in one place?

The first is an automatic list of install profile projects on Drupal.org. The latter is documentation, which provides the link to those install profiles plus a list of known custom distributions.

And where is there a page with a general overview and guidelines for creating an installation profile/distribution?

Installation profile documentation is sorely lacking. I learnt how to write them by reading the Install Profile API itself (which is not actually necessary in order to make installation profiles

The only documentation I know of is HOWTO: Write an installation profile for the Drupal installer. Some of this information appeared to me to be Drupal 5 specific and not kept up to date other than people's corrections in the submitted Comments.

If you feel energetic enough to work on that, that'd be amazing :) But to answer your question, no real decent documentation exists yet (in my opinion) so don't hesitate on the work you've begun already.

Regarding the existing documentation per the link above, I think that the documentation should be split out into three subsections per Drupal version, moving the existing stuff into a 'Drupal 5 Installation Profiles' section. For instance, I don't believe 'hook_profile_final()' exists or works in Drupal 6 (I may be wrong). Most of the community's best current installation profiles are in projects like Aegir, ManagingNews and OpenAtrium, and these are Drupal 6 based so would provide a good basis for examples. And I imagine Drupal 7 will be different again

In short, and also in my shameless opinion, that latter documentation page http://drupal.org/node/326175 (which seems to be the catalyst for the confusion you're feeling) is really just a collection of links, that will become out-of-date quickly, and muddies the subject between installation profiles, distributions, and links to the Module List pages, Project Usage etc... this page would be better replaced by decent documentation on Installation Profiles, and how they can be used to generate custom Drupal Distributions

damienmckenna’s picture

damienmckenna
Location TN, USA
commented

Might it make sense to rename "installation profile" to something like "distribution script" or something?

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Given that they go into the /profiles/ directory of a Drupal installation, I would find that more confusing :)

Maybe 'distribution profile' ? But really I don't see why some 'in your face' clarity wouldn't be enough around these ideas:

1) installation profiles provide an installation process that differs from the default

2) the nature of that different installation process, the components it requires and the tasks it performs, can transform the site into something different than the norm

3) the way installation profiles can be packaged alongside core provides an 'out of the box' experience that may differ from a standard Drupal system. Such things could be called Distributions

I think the problem is not the names, just that there's inconsistency in their use and not enough docs.

And other reasons, that such as that Installation Profiles are referred to by that name in several of the major Drupal development books - in my opinion it'd make sense to continue to refer to them that way.

Just my 2 cents, plus a hefty tip :)

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

i pretty well concur with mig on all that - he's definitely on the right track (obviously, he works on this stuff!) - docs can always use more work though, and i'm sure could be clearer.

dcampbell if you have your documentation, perhaps post it (here or on a handbook page and let us know where it is) so we can review it and adjust the needs of this issue accordingly?

patcon’s picture

patcon commented

I like where you're going with this mig, but it still seems more confusing then necessary, especially considering that installation profiles (at least in theory) are supposed to be the absolute simplest way that we can get new users into a functional drupal site.

Why not call the profile that provides the install process a "Distribution profile", and the actual final product the "Distribution"? No need to create new terms for each, is there? The word "installation" also doesn't seem to convey that it's different from the norm, whereas "distribution" does.

This almost needs a user survey. I'm not too far into this open-course community thing, but I still might be biased toward being overly comfortable with a word that average Joe Layman wouldn't ("distribution", that is).

PS, is your name an old-school Command & Conquer reference? That sounds vaguely familiar, and I used to play a lot of C&C... :D

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

I've no problems with the term 'Distributions'. Note that 'installation profile' is not 'creating a new term' because it is the long-existing term :)

I think my main concern was that changing the term would force publications such as the Pro Drupal Development book into an out-dated state as the term would become obsolete. That said, those books will continue to be updated by new versions.

Also consider projects like the Install Profile API, which, although they need much improvement (documentation!), they provide the best entry point into developing profiles, so a namespace change would be required there (and Drupal with its secret unique namespace policy does not like its components changing names on existing systems: just ask anyone trying to change the install profile of an existing site, especially those in Aegir systems)

But, not fussed really, I'm really not that stubborn :) I just hope that the impact of something so *completely* superficial as a name change (really, will it make it any easier? *profiles, whatever we call them, are still a shit to write! What are you really solving here, and will there be more 'solution' than 'confusion' from it when people go looking for 'install profiles' they've read about, that no longer exist by that name?) is fully taken into consideration before it's done.

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

personally i really do think that installation profile *is* an appropriate name. and that distribution... well... what is a distribution? i don't think that either of them is necessarily easy to deduce meaning from. but at least installation refers to something that happens during the installation process...

but definitely agree that some more consistent naming convention would help with confusion as well as more/better docs.

patcon’s picture

patcon commented

No hey, you're right. But I'm just completely in favor of moving one of the terms out of rotation. These terms may not be "new" around here, but they're part of a large vocabulary that any new user must grapple with when delving in. And like I said, I feel the vocabulary around installation profiles should be as slim and simple as possible, since at least in theory, this is where the real drupal newcomers will be headed -- and not-even newcomers in the sense we're used to thinking here on the forum, because they're not expected to wade into the world of nodes and input filters that we know. The thing they're looking for should just work, right? :)

arianek’s picture

arianek commented
Issue tags: +distributions

adding tags

arianek’s picture

arianek commented
Component: New documentation » Correction/Clarification
Priority: Normal » Major

would love to get some clarity on this if anyone cares to comment - there's a lot of inconsistency... going to tweet it and try and get some input.

dmitrig01’s picture

dmitrig01 commented

IMO

Install profile = .profile file -- instructions to drupal for how to install the site
Distribution = fully-featured package, including other modules, libraries, etc.

For example:
OpenAtrium is a distribution. It contains within it an install profile called atrium_installer.

henrijs.seso’s picture

henrijs.seso commented

Maybe "Bundle"?

langworthy’s picture

langworthy commented

I agree with #11

Further refined: Install profile == how is the site installed? Distro == how does the site work?

JuliaKM’s picture

JuliaKM commented

Greetings from Twitter.

I think the terminology makes sense and should remain the same. However, it does seem like the Download & Extend page should include a link to more information about what an installation profile is. You could include a link to an "About Installation Profiles" page under the Installation Profiles heading like what exists under the Themes heading.

cliff’s picture

cliff
he/him
commented

Seems like a distinction with a difference, and therefore worth preserving.

"Bundle" might actually be the better term for what we have been calling "distribution," but let's not go there. Doing so would give us three terms in use where we now have two — thus, a bigger headache than the one we're trying to cure.

If we have a style guide for docs, add the terms to it with an explanation as in @11 (and a See also or Not to be confused with [the other entry] in each).

Revise the content accordingly.

The goal, then, is to help people understand what the terms mean, because they will see them in similar contexts.

lisarex’s picture

lisarex commented

Just fyi, When/if we do change it, http://drupal.org/project/installation+profiles is a taxonomy & taxonomy description and will affect the site all over, so we'll need some sort of plan to carry it out :)

But yes, to outsiders I can imagine it's a little confusing.

damienmckenna’s picture

damienmckenna
Location TN, USA
commented

What would be nice would be if d.o could automagically bundle an installation profile into a distro... then we'd just be making "installation profiles" and would have a "download a complete Drupal distribution installer" link along side a "download just the installation profile" link, but that's another story.

I agree with #11.

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

@dmitri @langworthy - thanks for the input!

@julia (hi!) - that sounds like good tweaks to make - docs folks don't have access to edit those pages though, so any chance you can file an issue in the webmasters queue for it and link to it here? thanks!!!

@lisa agreed - and this is definitely a bigger project, but i think one that's going to become more and more necessary as time goes on, so i don't want to leave it *too* long... though it's not totally urgent, it's been a known issue for a while now. ;)

@lavametender @cliff - "Bundle" is not an option, it has a totally different definition in the context of D7+ entities and such - see http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules--field--field.module/group/field/7 for more info.

@cliff - this info will be added to either the style guide http://drupal.org/node/338208 and/or the drupal terminology section http://drupal.org/node/937 (as well as being changed in the current install profiles section as needed).

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

@damien - that's very meta ;)

also, forgot to mention, mig replied via twitter to say his notes from #3 still stand.

damienmckenna’s picture

damienmckenna
Location TN, USA
commented

After re-reading it, +1 for @mig5's comment #3 above.

JuliaKM’s picture

JuliaKM commented

@arianek Here the webmaster issue requesting more explanation of Installation Profiles on the download page: #1015508: Add About Installation Profiles Link to Download Page

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

@julia awesome, thanks! once this issue is sorted, we can post some proposed text on there (unless someone from infra objects)

anyone have time to draft some concise guidelines for the language that we can review and then finalize? if so, please assign to self!

benshell’s picture

benshell commented
Issue tags: +installation profiles

I just started a new page under the Installation Guide about Installation Profiles and Distributions: http://drupal.org/node/1089736
I borrowed a little copy from mig5 in this discussion, but mostly it's just a high level overview.

One thing that keeps this topic confusing is that the "installation profiles" at http://drupal.org/project/installation+profiles are mostly distributions, and NOT just installation profiles. I think besides issue #1015508 this page should be renamed Distributions. It used to be this page was just installation profiles, but in researching this today I found that there was a packaging script change last year which bundles everything together for a complete distribution download.

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

We really do need to follow up on this and get a definition completed, so we can apply it consistently. Do you want to follow up on #1015508: Add About Installation Profiles Link to Download Page?

jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
she/her
Primary language English
commented
Issue tags: +valid issue

tagging the Distributions issues so the issue triage avoids closing this issue

krina.addweb’s picture

krina.addweb commented

This link http://drupal.org/node/326175 redirect on 403 page

quietone’s picture

quietone commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)
Issue tags: -

It has been 9 years since there was discussion here and one of the references pages is a 404, so it isn't possible to confirm that the problem exists or not.

Is there anything to do here?

avpaderno’s picture

avpaderno
he/him
Primary language Italian
Location Brescia, 🇮🇹 🇪🇺
commented

I think the debate about installation profile versus distribution is outdated: Drupal.org no longer supports creating distributions, which have been replaced by recipes.

quietone’s picture

quietone commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (outdated)

@avpaderno, thanks for that.

Therefore, closing as outdated.

avpaderno’s picture

avpaderno
he/him
Primary language Italian
Location Brescia, 🇮🇹 🇪🇺
commented