development

What is DevShop?

DevShop is Drupal DevOps in a Box. DevShop makes is incredibly easy to host multiple Drupal projects (with multiple environments each) on one or many servers.

Quick Links: DevShop | DevShop Hosting | DevShop Provision | Provision Git

Why DevShop?

The developers of DevShop have been using Aegir for years. It is great and creating a lot of platforms and a lot of sites. However, keeping these sites and platforms organized can be a real chore.

So, after years of setting things up by hand, writing new custom scripts for every new client, and wondering if there could be a better way, we set out to architect and build a Drupal development shop infrastructure... in a box.

The goals of DevShop are...

1. to simplify management of multiple environments for multiple Drupal projects.
2. to provide web-based tools that streamline the Drupal site building workflow.
3. to provide a common, open-source infrastructure for Drupal development shops.

Installation

Inspecting the hook_schema() in the file patterns.install in order to have an overview of how patterns are stored in the database can be a good starting point.
Patterns are stored in a serialized array whose field is called "pattern". They have an unique serial identifier (field "pid"), and a set of metadata to indicate the state of the pattern ("status", "public", "updated", etc.), dates when was enabled or last updated, etc.

Patterns also implements the hook_requirements() in patterns.install, where the module will check if the filesystem is writable, if certain PHP variables are set in order to allow patterns to be remotely imported, etc.

After that we can revise the file in which global variables and constants are stored: includes/variables.inc. This file includes important constants like the ones that define the different types of actions (PATTERNS_CREATE, PATTERNS_MODIFY, …), those employed for the different status (PATTERNS_STATUS_OK, PATTERNS_STATUS_ENABLED, …), the default directory to store the patterns (PATTERNS_FILES_DIR_DEFAULT), etc.

Uniform Server Drupal 7 Setup (Verbose)

An explicit guide to setting up an easy Drupal development environment utilizing the Uniform Server. “The Uniform Server is a WAMP package that allows you to run a server on any MS Windows OS based computer. It is small and mobile to download or move around and can also be used or setup as a production/live server.” http://www.uniformserver.com/

Mike Anello's (ultimike) video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SPyQ3KJLJg

In case of difficulty:
http://wiki.uniformserver.com/index.php/New_Users:_Problems_Section

The Uniform Server + Drupal 7 Installation Step-By-Step

Download the Uniform Server (version Coral 8.1.2) (Not the latest version; because Drupal needs PHP 5.3.10 and the latest is PHP 5.4.4 etc.)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/miniserver/files/Uniform%20Server/8.1.2-...

Double-click Coral_8_1_2.exe (the self-extracting file for Uniform Server, it will create a folder in the same directory called "UniServer").

Move the UniServer folder and its contents to where you want your application and new Drupal sites to reside:

(typically Users/(your name)/Sites/UniServer)
or E:/UniServer (on a RAM stick or SD card)

What are alpha and beta releases, and release candidates?

Before every official "x.0" stable release of a new major version of Drupal core, there are usually a handful of alpha releases, beta releases and release candidates that are made available. These releases are not yet stable enough for production use, but are essential milestones on the way towards the official release. They allow a much wider pool of users to test the latest code and provide feedback before the official stable release. These releases should only be downloaded and used by developers very familiar with Drupal or those wishing to help find bugs in the software.

The guidelines below are for Drupal core. Some maintainers of contributed modules and themes might choose to provide alpha or beta releases or release candidates of their projects (though this is not required). You should read the release notes carefully in these cases, since the details might vary across projects, though the basics explained here should hold (an "alpha" is less stable than a "beta", which is less stable than an "RC", etc).

Alpha releases