Greetings, folks!
As you may or may not have heard (http://webchick.net/node/73), on
Friday we are going to roll Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1. This will be the very
first time that the *vast* majority of the community (not to mention
the outside world) will download Drupal 7, and play around with all of
the hard work you've all been doing for the past ~24 months. So! I
would love to do everything we can to really shine it up over the next
couple of days.
There are three queues that I would love people to focus on if they
have even *one hour* this week sometime to help Drupal 7:
1. webchick's D7 alpha hit list:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?
status[]=Open&issue_tags=webchick%27s+D7+alpha+hit+list
A variety of either *seriously* critical bugs (lingering critical API
breakages, the broken upgrade path, missing security updates) or
really glaring user-facing bugs that just make D7 look really sloppy.
Some of these are real head-scratchers, but others I think are pretty
obvious things that can be fixed in just a few lines of code.
We will still release the alpha regardless of the state of this list
on Friday, but progress here will help determine how many bold,
flashing disclaimers I can remove from the announcement. ;)
(Note that this is called *webchick's* D7 alpha hit list. Please do
not add/remove stuff to/from this tag. If you feel something is
drastically amiss, come find me on IRC and talk to me about it.)
2. API changes lacking documentation list:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?
status[]=Open&version[]=7.x&issue_tags=Needs+Documentation
Another thing that I'm really hoping to see along with the release of
alpha 1, is a torrent of developers beginning to make good on their
#D7CX pledges, by porting their modules and themes to Drupal 7. Right
now, however, there are *two pages* of issues whose API changes are
*not documented* in either the modules or theme upgrade guide. This is
an extremely critical situation that we need to resolve *ASAP* in
order to not stall the updates of 6.x modules to 7.x. (We all remember
how much that 5.x -> 6.x lag was, don't we?)
If you choose to help with this (bless you!), please both edit the
appropriate handbook page(s) for the change:
* 6.x => 7.x module upgrade guide (http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7)
* 6.x => 7.x theme upgrade guide (http://drupal.org/update/theme/6/7)
...and also cross-file issues into the Coder module queue (http://drupal.org/node/add/project-issue/coder
) against the "Upgrade Routines" component.
Helping whittle this queue down not only will give me fewer gray hairs
and make the D7 alpha 1 launch a huge success, but it will *also* help
get you acclimated to the changes forthcoming in Drupal 7 *now* so
that you are prepared when D7 is officially released in a few months.
Plus, you can make a mean living with your brand new "Drupal 6 to 7
module/theme porting" business. ;)
(Incidentally, I highly encourage the Drupal 8 maintainer to create a
"Wall of Shame" for developers whose patches end up on this list for
longer than 24 hours. ;))
3. User interface text:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?
status[]=Open&version[]=7.x&component[]=user+interface+text
The docs and usability teams are doing one final pass on all of the
strings in core before we turn the translators loose on Friday. A lot
of these require no more skill to review than the ability to read
English. :)
Thank you all SO much in advance for your help, folks! Let's blow 'em
all out of the water! :)
-Angie
P.S.: I am probably going to be doing a "commit freeze" starting
Wednesday night when I go to bed, in order to give 24 hours or so for
any follow-up bugs to be shaken out prior to rolling the release, so
we don't accidentally break something horribly in the final hours. GULP.
