Field Gatekeeper

CCK with Views/CTools exportable flavour...

Many have wished for Views default_views functionality for Content Construction Kit, however, the nature of how CCK works makes this difficult.

The two main reasons:

1. Changing field settings might potentially destroy data, or cause CCK to move large amounts of data between tables.
2. Each field is really divided in two: Shared database settings (column types, sizes, multiple, required, etc), and instance specific settings (formatters).

Field Gatekeeper attempts to deal with these issues by:

1. Only updating fields when asked to, from drush commands, through it's admin page, or by a module specifically calling it from an install or update function.
2. Splitting the field setup between 'gatekeepers' which decide on the global settings, and instance users (content type implementing modules).

We have been using this model for a number of projects, and it's proved itself as a useful way to deal with CCK on a number of sites.