Drupal is nothing less than pathological. rant

Heh lots of rants on the forum today.

Modules on their own can never package other modules along with themselves... just not possible, not how the Drupal development community works, the technology, the "Drupal way" we live by, etc. However there "can" be installation profiles that do this, or Features which simplify the process of making many dependent modules and settings work together. Drupal is "not" like many other CMSes... it is more complex in order to be more flexible where others are not. Several years ago it "used" to be common for modules to be more self-contained and do everything on their own without relying on other modules, however this became unmanageable and a massive waste of time as every. single. developer. reinvented the wheel for each module, recreating the same basic code over and over and over (wasting time developing, wasting system resources running copies of essentially the same thing, wasting admin/users time figuring out how to work with each slightly different implementation, etc). So since then developers have turned towards making modules that offer specific APIs and functionality that can be reused by other modules. Various other modules take these smaller features and make bigger features and functionality with them. Features module can now take a snapshot of a configuration of these modules and make it possible to redistribute that.

Modules can't auto-enable their dependencies, and while many people (such as me) would "not" want that, it could be a nice option. Perhaps suggest it for Drupal 8.

Drupal versioning works like this: ...6.8, 6.9, 6.10, 6.11... make sense? Version numbers not math.

Use Drush. Then installing and enabling modules takes seconds. 10 modules == 15 seconds. And no need to rant.

Still trying to figure out why the drupal site says the current version is 6.19 and the videos from two years ago say the latest version is 6.3

What is so strange about that? After 6.9 came 6.10, after 6.10 came 6.11, etc. It's not a decimal number.

"You are all trying to solve the big problems and forgetting about the little boring ones."

It's amazing how many little boring ones get fixed every minute of every day - maybe just not your ones??

You cant really deploy modules with the parent modules they depend on - what happens if you have 2 modules with the same dependancy? And dependencies mean that large chunks of code havent had to be re-written so they are essential. It has evolved to be more efficient. And that's the key here I think - the Drupal project has evolved with shed loads of input from lots of people. It has evolved to deal with almost every web project you can think of, but it requires customizing in the form of add on modules.

And thats is why there's so many modules - if one doesnt do the job then someone writes a new one to fullfill their needs, and most of the time this has some use being thrown back into the community.

If you cant find the perfect module then you'll have to learn php and write your own - simple! :-)

I hope you get past this stumbling block, and start to get on better with Drupal. It can be frustrating, but it's the way it is by evolved design.

One thing I will say - you've only been a member of D.O for 2 weeks, but been struggling away for 6 months?? The community is your best friend when developing. Often your questions can be answered and you can have an input on what new features are added to modules - and you can also ask for best practice solutions, because you can be fairly sure that someone somewhere has tried what you are trying.

If all else fails theres php and notepad!

Good luck with your work, Joe

The very thing that makes Drupal so great is the very thing that makes it so incredibly maddening to work with and difficult to learn. Thousands of modules, upon modules upon modules upon modules upon modules. The Drupal community seems to have some clue to this because the modules interface does flag dependencies. My question is, If you know it's a dependency, why don't you deploy it with your package? Why don't you then enable the dependent modules? It's like dialing a long distance number without the one and the message coming up telling you that you must first dial a "1".

I am very sorry, but by saying this all experienced Drupal developers know you have absolutely no clue how Drupal works.

I have been in a closed loop of installing and enabling dependent modules all day. All I want to do is have a small club have a simple calendar of monthly events with reminders. I really don't understand why e107, Joomla, and Drupal seem to have such a difficult time with this.

It doesn't. Just because of the (sometimes overly) flexible way of how things work in Drupal, you can easily create a calendar with CCK and Views yourself.

You are all trying to solve the big problems and forgetting about the little boring ones.

That's because Drupal's structure is more than flexible enough to overcome those little things yourself. Your problem probably needs a function override, CSS override or template override to fix. Again: Read documentation.

yeah, I know, I've broken all the forums rules. What-ev-er. everyone needs to vent once in a while

Oh for sure! It's always good to vent your ignorance against the community. This way we all know you haven't read any documentation and that you seem like the type of user that wants to snap their fingers to create a whole site, fully tailored to ones needs...

flame off - Back to trying to make the last six months of studying Drupal pay off.

double that time and you might get the hang of it. Same goes for SilverStripe, Typo3, Joomla etc. If you want to dive in, expect a learning curve!!

One's trash is another's treasure. Without "modules upon modules upon modules" I wouldn't be using Drupal (or be able to make a website for that matter)

Besides, I fondly remember that day of adding all those modules. ;)

Well what do you expect when thousands of inexperienced coders who don't know each other throw hundreds of modules that do what they want, not quite what you want, together into a big giant bowl of code pasta and mix it with pesto?

Ninety percent of drupal code doesn't apply to your website, it's just carried along with the little bit of functionality you decided to settle for because it almost does what you need. Then you modify it too, adding your bits of olive hacks trying to make it tastier, yet it still tastes like canned store-bought spagetti Os and and everyone you serve it to recognizes it as yet another plate of the same yucky spaghetti.

Best to learn how to code and build exactly what you want. One style of coding - yours, one tenth the code, easy to maintain because you built it. Delicious.