2 Weeks to Drupal 7 Code Freeze
2 Weeks to Drupal 7 Code Freeze
As of today, we are now only two weeks from the Drupal 7 code freeze. When we hit Sept. 1, from then on in, only bug fixes will be worked on (no new features), as everyone focuses on generally improving the code and how it functions. Because of the deadline coming up, there is a lot of focus on getting new patches committed to HEAD before Sept. 1, and to get the patches committed, they need to be reviewed by the community and given a stamp of approval. As of 11:41am PST today, the D7 queue contains:
Where can you help?
There are many areas that are being focused on for D7 that need some extra help, some examples are:
- Usability: see the D7UX group, Dries' blog, Gabor's blog and the D7 User Experience site for more info.
- D7 Contrib Modules: D6 had low adoption rates for the first many months largely because important contrib modules were not ready upon release. There is a great movement to make sure this is improved for D7, so it is really usable when it's released. See post on Cyrve.com for a good overview.
- Fields in core: ie. moving CCK module into core, see Dries' post on this.
- Image in core: see the thread on drupal.org for some background.
- D7 Docs: there's been intensive work on bringing the D7 documentation up to date so that it ships with current documentation, more info on Addi's blog.
- DBTNG (Database the Next Generation), ie. new work on the database abstraction layer - see the API page for more info and there's some background on Larry Garfield's blog.
- Plugin Manager: for managing and updating contrib modules, for background see these threads [1] [2] [3] [4] and [5], on drupal.org
- RDF: see the semantic web group, the issue queue for RDF and also Dries' blog.
If I've missed anything please do comment and add to the list!
Patch Review and Doc Sprints
Patch reviews! Get in there and help review the patches so they can be marked RTBC and committed to HEAD before code freeze hits! Find an area you want to help out on and dive in - if you need help or want to see if there are any urgent patches that need work, get on IRC #drupal and say that you're there to help review patches. There have also been patch review sprints going on fairly regularly (keep an eye out on twitter or groups.drupal.org). The documentation team can also use your help, there is a huge effort going on updating all the docs to D7 in time for launch - for more info on how you can help, see the community initiatives page, or join in on one of the frequent doc sprints on IRC #drupal-docs that are happening Tuesday and Thursday (and sometimes Wednesday as well). There is also more info on the docs group page, and if you just want to dive in, head to the docs issue queue or the D7 issue queue, filtered for docs issues. Join a sprint, or organize one of your own - don't be afraid, grab a friend and get involved!