For those of you not subscribed to the development mail list and are curious, (why are you not subscribed if you are interested?) the conditions for Dries rolling a release candidate are now announced below.

The short answer is, it depends on how many bug fixes are submitted and how many people help review them. Possibly as early as next week if the level of critical bugs continues to go down as they are fixed and a base level of stability is met.

If you are a module developer, now is the time to start playing with CVS so you can look at what will be necessary to update your contributed modules for everyone to use and get started.

For everyone's benefit, this page has been updated to help with module upgrades. Now, Jeff Robins was distracted by curiosity and boredom and wrote a module to help evaluate and semi-automate the process.

If you are dependant on and use some contributed modules, please contact the module maintainer if you are able to help. You can also attach a patch to that projects issue and perhaps take some of the workload off and get your preferred contributed modules updated sooner than later.

Some main areas of interest off the top of my head;

  • forms api
  • search improvements
  • revisions improvements
  • some AJAX stuff (depending on the variety of definitions of AJAX)
  • UI improvements at various spots and levels
  • blocks can now be assigned to various regions (left|right|header|footer|main -depending on theme support).

Here is the email announcement from Dries in full:

Hello world,

- I opened up the use of the DRUPAL-4-7 tag for contributed projects
(not for core). Thus, if you maintain a module, theme or
translation, you can create a DRUPAL-4-7 branch. Because Drupal HEAD
and Drupal 4.7 are still one and the same, it's probably premature to
branch your project (unless you want to rewrite your project for
Drupal 4.8.0). Also, the DRUPAL-4-7 tarballs won't be packaged for
another week or so.

- I haven't released a Drupal 4.7 release candidate yet because I
feel we're still dealing with too many (critical) bugfixes. We need
a base level of stability and confidence before we can roll out a
release candidate. Nonetheless, Drupal HEAD is getting more and more
stable every day so keep reporting and fixing those bugs. It is the
one path to a Drupal 4.7.0 release (candidate). I think we might be
able to roll a release candidate as soon as next week.

- As of tomorrow, I'm not likely to make any more API or database
changes, unless deemed important. (I might make an exception for
some of the pending patches/work but I'm not likely to consider _new_
patches that add _new_ functionality.) I'll be more strict, and that
implies that some patches will not make it into Drupal 4.7.0.

- In good tradition, I plan to upgrade Drupal.org to the release
candidate as soon as possible. I'm currently waiting for the
simplenews.module to be "forms API"-ified, and I have yet to port
some drupal.org specific modules/pages (eg. the one that generates
http://drupal.org/mailing-lists/). Chances are that the
cvslog.module needs more work as well -- haven't checked. As soon we
can upgrade, we'll be able to roll out the improved search module.
All in all, it's probably going to take another 2-3 weeks though
before we can attempt to upgrade drupal.org.

--
Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/

Here's one way you can help to test things. Things get done by people doing them so dig in, help out and have fun.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

Comments

redpineseed’s picture

just wonder how test is done at this moment, and if any automatic tools are used?

drupalguest’s picture

I can't wait to see a list of new features that will be added. I'll have to check more often now. =)

=====
Drupal hosting - Up to $70 off, use coupon: HOTPROMO

alexis’s picture

So I just subscribed to the development mailing list and grabbed the code from CVS, I am already testing it in my server and will do my best to help.

Regards!

Alexis Bellido - Ventanazul web solutions

capmex’s picture

I will start testing it on my local machine, in preparation of a smooth transition of my sites.

Reporting back, both of my sites run pretty well on 4.7. I was very surprised that even the database upgrade worked fine. Only I have found one php error related to a non existent table field, but besides that both sites are working fine. I liked very much the changes made to the ui for editing/adding content and other forms in general.

The forms api is very impressive, reminds me of a programming library. I'm playing with the formproc contrib module.
--
Webmaster Resources | Canadian Directory

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Here is a list of modules that are considered important and deserve some extra attention:

http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/2005-October/010848.html

Image, event, and flexinode alrady updated but need testing.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

richie’s picture

I'd like to test the cvs-head. I've checked out from cvs and followed the upgrading handbook. But update.php has no output and the database is not updated. I've tried it with drupal installation in a subdirectory and in the root, too. It's allways the same.
If you help me to upgrade my 4.6.3 testsite, I help to test... :-)
--
richie

lennart’s picture

update.php has no output and the database is not updated

I have this problem on one of my hosts, but not locally, and not on another host - strange...

Best regards,
Lennart - forsker.net

Best regards,
Lennart

richie’s picture

No one knows (it seems so) :-( . Will be Drupal 4.7 released with this buggy update routine?

--
richie

lennart’s picture

On that particular host it is my first update - so I cannot say if this is something new with Drupal "4.7".

I am not sure it is a bug with the update routine - maybe it is something about the way the host set things up.

Best regards,
Lennart - forsker.net

Best regards,
Lennart

Tanner-1’s picture

I'm sure the update routine is bugged. I've experienced the exactly same problem too!

Simply we CANT upgrade... Its strange that the upgrade function is so badly implemented in an extremely well done CMS like drupal...

sepeck’s picture

This is for announcements.

Please look through the issue tracker to see if this is reported. If it is not, then please file an issue and include as much relevant details as you can! Without active participation by people these issues will not be found and will not be fixed.

This is CVS release currently. CVS is NOT expected to be stable. Now, when CVS/HEAD is rolled into a RC (Release Candidate) then we STILL expect to find issues but hopefully not destroy your site kind of issues. We just hope to find problems so that they can be solved BEFORE a 4.7.0 version is released.

If your comment was on the upgrade process itself that has essentially been in place for a while, then please subscribe to the derupal-devel mail list and involve yourself in a solution.

Now the original links were obviously not obvious. Here they are again. For reviewing patches, please see here: http://drupal.org/patch/review For one way to set up a test environment please see http://drupal.org/node/28245 .

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

sepeck’s picture

There is NOT a Release Candidate yet. Dries said to many issues still fairly clearly. Making FUD comments here is not the correct way. Have you yourself seen this issue in your testing? Have you yourself tested? There is a link I provided on how to test. Here are the two links more clearly http://drupal.org/node/28245 http://drupal.org/patch/review

Please feel free to test and report issues properly so that they may be addressed or identified as they are demonstrated. In this way they can be fixed. The more fixed before the RC, the faster we get to full release.

Personally, update.php runs fine for my test sites. There are other issues with misc sql queries, but most I come across are reported already and I haven't taken the time to recreate the ones I've seen and fill out proper bug reports. I run on IIS so I actually expect more issues than the average dev who runs on Apache.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

lennart’s picture

sepeck I am perfectly aware that there is of yet no RC :)

I was installing HEAD - and on 1 out of 3 systems update.php produced no output after having been run. I already said that I thought the issue was in my host's set-up, so your claim of FUD seems misplaced.

I reviewed some patches that have now made it into core, and I hope to be able to contribute in more ways soon :)

Best regards,
Lennart - forsker.net

Best regards,
Lennart

sepeck’s picture

It was the 'no one knows' hope not buggy release' comment, not yours that I was responding to. Trying to get people to test like you're doing is like pulling teeth.

Per your message, you haven't established if this was specific to your host setup or update.php. :)

Little early for someone's random comments expressing concerns about the quality of Drupal releases. The comment just assumes a lot of things the way it was phrased.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

lennart’s picture

I thought you were referring to me - my bad !

You are right - I have not established exactly what differs between my set-ups, thereby being able to pinpoint the cause.

I am currently looking into the issue. I can assure you -- if I do find the cause I will report it in the proper place.

We are both committed to the success of Drupal - so keep up the good work ;)

Best regards,
Lennart - forsker.net

Best regards,
Lennart

richie’s picture

Excuse my asking for help, master.
--
richie

drewish’s picture

"No one knows (it seems so) :-( . Will be Drupal 4.7 released with this buggy update routine?"

What part of that comment was the request for help? All I see is some unhelpful speculation. That and you publicly question the commitment to quality of every Drupal contributor. So let me ask, what sort of a reaction did you expect?

richie’s picture

"What part of that comment was the request for help?"

"I'd like to test the cvs-head. I've checked out from cvs and followed the upgrading handbook. But update.php has no output and the database is not updated. I've tried it with drupal installation in a subdirectory and in the root, too. It's allways the same.
If you help me to upgrade my 4.6.3 testsite, I help to test... :-)"

--
richie

lennart’s picture

The described problem is no longer there. Update works fine!
Thanks!

Best regards,
Lennart - forsker.net

Best regards,
Lennart

Korak’s picture

Could someone please explain to me what "forms api" means?

Thanks in advance!

tostinni’s picture

there's great doc on the handbook and thread on the forums about it, use search

Thox’s picture

Offering a link would be more helpful. For example: http://drupal.org/node/33338

Also, in brief: the new forms API is a significant change in the way forms are handled internally by Drupal.

shane’s picture

For those of you not subscribed to the development mail list and are curious, (why are you not subscribed if you are interested?)

Steven - it's pretty simple. I subscribed for a while, for the very reasons you suggest. But I was overwhelmed with useless (to me!) email that wasn't relavent to a generalized understanding of where development was going. Too much chaff, not enough wheat.

I think there are a lot of people out there interested in the development timelines and general milestones as they come, are met or missed, and pass. But not all of us want to see every patch and conversation about all of those patches and minutiae of detail.

Please don't get me wrong - I know that the development list and all the itinerate conversations that go along with it are usefull to you guys and gals in the trenches; but it's just overwhelming to those of us just looking for a generalized "fix" on what's going on in the dev arena.

Maybe with the monthly Drupal Newsleter, a running article about Development goals and milestones could be added? That wold be an excellent place to let the rest of us know how the winds are blowing and when to start expecting to see major or minor releases...

Thanks - and keep rockin' the Drupal world!

tostinni’s picture

For this reason, patches have been taken off this list ;)

sepeck’s picture

an attempt to get people to participate and be mildly humourous about it. I don't code. So here is my strategy for the dev list.

I subscribe (when they had the issues added I just filtered them out with rules). I follow conversations. If a given thread is out of my depth or I am no longer interested in it, then I stop following it. If it is about UI mockups or strategies then I may participate in pointing out issues I see with it. If I have time, I go test a patch or two and comment on that patches issue. If get more then a week behind, I delete everything older then a week and continue onward.

I don't attempt to follow it closely, just track the trends. You don't have to. No one has to, but it is useful.

As to 'milestones', well that was tried before. That requires someone to set them, it requires people to commit to them and it needs things to get done. What we seem to have evolved to, is things some people need/want and work on getting done. We end up with 1-5 people discussing a given issue, then approaches then 1-3 solutions tried and one final base that gets done or everyone gets distracted and wanders off by shiny challanging code elsewhere :).

I don't see how a published milestone list would actually work out unless someone stepped up and started regularly tracking them for everyone. I remember the newsletter has some stuff about it in it recently. To build a summary of a months traffic would probably take at least 3-4 hours a week of someones time, minimum, skipping a lot of stuff.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

chx’s picture

I write quickies about the more important commited patches. Usually I need to read ~10 pages of drupal.org/cvs for a months, an hour or so, not a biggie. I am not sure what else you need...
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu.

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

sangamreddi’s picture

Hi sepeck,

Thanks for posting this info. I search the site but coudn't find the status of the 4.7 RC. This is very informative.

Thanks once again

Sunny
www.gleez.com

kiev1.org’s picture

>forms api
Help to repair please FCKeditor under Drupal 4.7
http://drupal.org/node/36797
-------------------------------------------------------------
Yes - That again normally worked WYSIWIG EDITORs it is necessary to return in a file form.inc this code
http://drupal.org/node/36797#comment-56118

alliax’s picture

I'm not happy with how things have been dealt with !
This summer, the roadmap has been publicized and said that a release candidate will be out for MID OCTOBER !! And now nearly at the end of NOVEMBER you're telling us that it will be "in some time"

OK, just shut up and keep on working on drupal 4.7, why telling us things when the deadlines don't count ?!?..

I know if I'm not happy I should help, but that's YOUR opinion.. it doesn't excuse you for making statements that you don't keep !
So don't do statements !

Cheers,

chx’s picture

My friend, where were you when we did the form API conversion? Oh, you say "I am not a programmer!" Then where were you when when we hunted down the bugs? Where were you when we documented the whole stuff? Are you aware that there are a nice number of theme functions in the core at this moment which are not documented?

Yes form API made us miss a "deadline" (heh, I saw noone paying a dime for keeping that one...) but it is a badly necessary and a very cool thing for Drupal.

See, you can do much better things than venting on drupal.org.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu.

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

alliax’s picture

Yes, I know if I'm not confortable with what's going on I should help, but please just ignore my post, keep on working on Drupal 4.7 final release.
There're always buggers people complaining, well today that's me !

drofnar’s picture

after comments like these I can understand how frustrated some developers must feel. I would just like them to know that we appreciate their efforts despite the difficulties and delays. Also appreciate people like Sepeck who spend a lot of their time doing their best to communicate with the rest of us about developments. The previous posts were totally unnecesarry and achieved absolutely nothing - in fact if anything they are amongst the most pointless posts I have read on these forums and have just wasted more of everyones time.

alliax’s picture

Thank you for sharing.

iraszl’s picture

Deadlines are for the developers. They need a target to work against. But meeting deadlines is not their ultimate goal. Having a great release is.

---
http://raszl.net

willistg’s picture

Tis true.

Why do people get upset for software dev missing a deadline? It's the equivalent of getting upset that someone did not predict the future correctly.

Furthermore, I may need a clue here, but why are some folks felling that their very lives hang on when 4.7 is released. I am unaware of any mandatory upgrade, or punishment I have coming if I don't comply. 4.7 is late who cares, my sites still run last time I checked.

Honestly, being an US citizen, I'm upset with a complete lack of deadlines in certain areas that probably matter more to the world then a open source project. ;)

Thomas G. Willis

alliax’s picture

Here's the clue : since mid october I started 3 sites in Drupal. I could have started them directly with the new Drupal instead of using a 4.6.3
So all new things like YouTube.com integration in the Video Module would work.

Anyway, I know as much as you what is Drupal and how it is being developed by volunteers. But for once I felt like complaining about false hopes spreading, should I be burnt then ?

My comment is worth nothing, but at least it's a change compared to praises, because I CAN DO PRAISES TOO, that's easy and that's what I usually do.

laura s’s picture

In a volunteer effort, setting goals is the important thing, I would say. Complaining does nothing mainly because it's not constructive. There is nothing that anyone can take away from that complaint and use, now or in the future. Why? Because in a loosely organized volunteer effort, sometimes all the cats don't get herded as quickly as everyone would like.

And don't think I take this view because I'm not trying to do Drupal installations, or would not benefit from 4.7's availability sooner rather than later.

To take the holiday analogy, complaining about 4.7's delay is like men at Thanksgiving complaining that the turkey isn't on the table yet.

Laura
===
pingVisionrare patternscattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

You might want to consider backing off a little.
You're clearly out of line.
You should understand that this is a project run by volunteers, so don't expect the deadlines to be very hard.

Please try to harness your frustration.

Best

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

thanks for the slick update Sepeck..it's great to see the progress made already.

I've been having a quick peek at the CVS version in anticipation of the 4.7 release and it looks very exciting.

For newbies stumbling across this thread and are tempted to download the latest CVS...please note that Drupal CVS is undergoing a lot of development at the moment..,.it's a "work in progress"...for lack of a better description..stick with Drupal 4.6.3 until Drupal 4.7 is released.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

dries’s picture

I'd like to see some people compare performance of Drupal 4.6 with Drupal 4.7 (CVS HEAD).

  1. Make a copy of your Drupal 4.6 site, disable all contributed modules, and test performance using ab, ab2 or some other tool. Test a number of pages (eg. main page, forum overview page, a node) with and without Drupal's page caching.
  2. Upgrade the copy of your Drupal 4.6 site to Drupal 4.7 (CVS HEAD), make sure everything is still configured properly, and benchmark your site again. (If you run into upgrade problems, make sure to report them.)
  3. Report the numbers and/or investigate any performance regressions in the comments.
alldirt’s picture

Would it be a good idea to compare performance and upgrade problems to a fixed point in time, like a beta release?

Could we create a "release status", "next release" or "release engineerings" page somewhere (as proposed here: http://drupal.org/node/34977#comment-67263 ) and link it under the support/project tab? It is to track progression, new features, open issues, requests etcetera. Just link important discussions on this page or use a wiki like solution (same request for efforts concerning database schema and architecture documentation).

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

There are currently no performance related patches pending, so if you just take a current cvs checkout, we should have a usefull result.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

dries’s picture

Just use the latest CVS HEAD version; no need to make it any more complex. Does that mean you're going to do some benchmarking?

alldirt’s picture

Maybe, upgrading or benchmarking could be a nice part of my Drupal evaluation. Installing Drupal's platform was easy, but tuning is different as is predicting Drupal's road ahead.

However, I'm new to this platform. I've been involved with .LRN thusfar, which is built on the openACS toolkit (demo).

Thox’s picture

I've done roughly as you suggested and posted some results here: http://drupal.org/node/38738

dries’s picture

Just a quick update on this week's activity. A large number of bugfixes have been committed (see CVS commit messages) and most -- but not all -- showstopping problems have been taken care of. It has been pretty crazy so kudos to all the contributors. You rock!

However, there are still a fair number of non-critical bugs/patches that need some love. The patch/bug report rate decreased somewhat but that might be due Thanksgiving. It might be a while before we can release the final Drupal 4.7.0 release, but a first release candidate is just around the corner.

webchick’s picture

But is there any possible way for you or someone else 'in the know' to take an afternoon and go through the issues queue to identify each of the bugs (or at least the general areas... PostgreSQL, etc.) that are preventing the RC release? That way myself and other contributors will know where we should best focus our efforts.

dries’s picture

An overview of all the critical problems you can help with:
http://drupal.org/project/issues?projects=3060&versions=1&priorities=1&s...

redpineseed’s picture

for us not yet involved in the api level dev, i would like to be involved in RC level debug or test, ie api freeze or RC release.

some of the eclipse projects have 6 RC releases : RC1, RC2 ... RC6 and then final. maybe we can do something similar.

robertdouglass’s picture

It is safe to expect is soon, now, I believe.

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

sepeck’s picture

There are generally at least two RC releases before final release. As this one had significant change we'll see how many Dries feel we need.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

xand’s picture

What exactly is the versioning policy? when are there *.0 increments instead of 0.*? (or - what will it need for a drupal 5 to appear?)

sorry- there seems to be no pertinent information (http://drupal.org/node/27362 comes closest) in the handbook, and I've only been around since 4.5

sepeck’s picture

They will be similier to 4.7rc1 4.7rc2 if I remember correctly. They are very short lived and when final is released are removed and vanish so people don't use them anymore.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

xand’s picture

thanks...

I was actually wondering about when it will be drupal 5.0 rather than 4.8, for example..

sepeck’s picture

as a guess mind you, we will have a 5.0 in the order of progression. so, 4.7, then 4.8, then 4.9 after which it will be 5.0.

Unless we suddenly have a huge change of features/functionality I doubt the slow ordered progression will be disrupted.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

webchick’s picture

I thought that too initially, but that's not true. After 4.9 we could conceivably have 4.10 and 4.11 and 4.12817381729179279112 ;)

From the Deciphering Drupal version numbers page:

"The major release version usually indicates significant API functionality and database changes."

Forms API was arguably a significant API change, but not to the point where it warranted a 5.0 release. It might be that Drupal re-written in OOP, with AJAX everything, an installer, and integrated CCK is enough to warrant a 5.0 release. But I guess that would be up to Dries. :)

xand’s picture

ooh. I hope not.

having 4.11 and 4.9 coexisting could be a confusing thing.

ergophobe’s picture

It shouldn't be.

Apache 1 is at 1.3.34 or so
PHP 4.3 went to 4.3.11 before advancing to 4.4
I'm running MySQL 4.0.22

They're just serial numbers that, as it happens, are not on a strict decimal system. Major version numbers should be for major versions, simple as that.

Anyway, everyone complains when Microsoft rushes to market with buggy software. Then they complain when Drupal doesn't rush to market with buggy software.

I'm busy and haven't even found time to do any testing myself, so I really can only cut the people who put real time into this a *lot* of slack.

sepeck’s picture

The sad part is I wrote that page. :P

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

enthusaroo’s picture

Any news on the 4.7 RC1 release? I'd love to help with testing out a RC release (as opposed to the CVS).