Backdrop CMS Weekly meetings, 26 Mar 2015

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From YouTube: Backdrop Weekly Status Meeting 3/26/15

Description

Join us for our weekly status meeting on Backdrop CMS!

A

Alright, hello, everybody, it's a March 26 2015 and this is the backdrop weekly status update. We get together every Thursday around this time at 1pm Pacific, to talk about backdrop and to give everybody an update on how things are progressing in the world of backdrop. So we always start up these meetings.

A

um Talking about any updates from the project management committee that sir, our overall group for conflict resolution or large project shifting decisions- and we don't have anything new since last week, but we do still have a whole bucket load of free phpstorm licenses if you're a backdrop contributed module developer, which means you have to join the backdrop contributor on github. We can give you a free, PHP, strong license you can use for next year, which is great so if you've joined the backdrop, contribute and you'd like to use.

A

Phpstorm just shoot us an email info at backdrop, CMS org, and we will hook you up um community growth. We had one new author joined the contributed macho author group since last week and kind of as we've seen every actually hang on any new projects.

A

um Every single week we've been clipping along and around between seven and ten new projects every week since we started keeping track, which is which is pretty incredible, we do need more contributors, though we're only growing at a new contributor, like maybe three or four at a good week, and maybe one or two at a at a slower week, new contributed authors but of those contributed authors. It seems like we're really clipping, along with those finite number of authors. Writing a whole lot of modules reporting a lot of montrose, which is great.

A

Thank you guys so much for doing all of that. We reporting modules by long-term we're really going to need more people to maintain all of these modules that we've been courting. Don't stop porting, though, because it's still still helpful and effective for us to get a lot of these modules initially ported and later we can get new maintainers in to maintain it for the long term.

A

um Let's see in the news, mid camp was last weekend and that's the reason why jen Lambton is not with us, because she got hit by the most extreme case of drupal flu. You've ever encountered, and so it's Thursdays you've been up for four whole days now, but mid camp was great. Last weekend we also got our first edition backdrop, t-shirts ever created and printed, which you can see here. They look just like this. That are just the logo.

A

This is one of the few t-shirts that is remaining because we distributed all the ones that we got pretty much immediately on the first day of the camp. Thank you very much, Doug van for sponsoring that first fifty first edition backdrop t-shirts. They were huge hit. We gave them all out on the first day of the camp, which was friday, and I probably saw a dozen people wearing them on saturday. It was awesome, so it's pretty sweet not to see just people like taking a t-shirt.

A

Well so said nobody could burn it in an effigy, not allowed. um So if you aren't going to burn it, then we would happily give you one, especially if you've been a contributor to the project and we distribute all of them pretty much immediately and then had a lot of people wearing them around a camp which I thought was just fantastic to see. People excited enough about the project to to get a t-shirt, but also both enough and comfortable enough with the project to be wearing it at a major drupal event.

A

We were also sponsoring the code sprint. The code spread room was sponsored by back job, so I think that may have also gone a little ways towards generating some goodwill. Okay, um things that are not back job itself. We always like to talk about the peripherals around backdrop and say how our progress is coming along with all of these issues.

A

First item on this list is drush. We've been trying to work on getting dressed support for backdrop for a while now and right now, things are in a really good place where the drudge project itself has abstracted things to make it possible for us to use drush by adding. In a backdrop specific class into our own project repository, which would make it so that backdrop could provide its own kind of dotting file or a class to integrate a or map all of the functions that dress shoes is into backdrop.

A

So we have the capability to do that right now and Greg Anderson has been saying: that's if you guys want to do it. The time is now.

A

We just need to write our own integration, because that's not going to come from the dress community will need to do it ourselves, but as far as everything else, the dress community, basically is ready for us to air, has been abstracted so that we can actually utilize it. There's an issue over than the dress issue, queue, drush, ops, /, brush issue 342 on github, and you can see that issue has now been closed because we're pretty much ready to write our backup integration. We just have been coming yet.

A

So it's great, we have everything we need there.

A

Let's see next item is an update server right now, when you install backdrop, it asks you if you would like to check for updates still just like drupal does, but when you check for go to the update status page, it just says that the update status is not implemented. Yet implementing this update server is tied into a bunch of other things. It's all kind of tied together on drupal.org project module, manages the issue queue. The project releases, the project pages, the project, browser of all themes and distributions.

A

All of that is all tied together in the project module on drupal.org and what I've been doing recently is trying to push forward with the backdrop project module so that we can browse and find and collaborate better together, because right now, the github list of modules, although functional, if you know what you're looking for, is really difficult to browse search for tell which versions are stable or pretty much anything beyond finding the the raw code for the project.

A

So we're not going to worry about issue queue management because that's all being handled github, of course, and the way our releases are going to work is inverted from the wager. Paleta work works where drupal.org you create a tag and push it up, and then that allows you to create a release on drupal.org, but we have no ability to prevent people from making releases on github. So what will happen is if you tag and push up a release on github and then make release notes an official release on github that will automatically create a release.

A

Note on backdrop, CMS goerge, so it'll be a little bit different, because the basis of control is going to be at github instead of on fact, Rob CMS Borg you'll still be able to log in to back top CMS da org. But that's that's down the road.

A

Ok, let's see issues for that. The primary issue where I think all this is really happening is, in the backdrop ops group on github there's an issue queue for backdrop, CMS gorg and it's issue number eight.

A

Okay, other peripherals, the API website API backdrop CMS org is just rolling along. It's just dandy. Nice ones, I'm talking about updating its theme to use the same theme as the flagship website, but that's a lower priority item.

A

Overall, it's just training along um I think that we're all up to date on change records that need to be created and if we come across any any more things, I actually ran across one with an early translation issue hasn't been addressed in a change record. If you run across anything that we're missing a backwards compatibility layer for or there's some change, that was a documented file, an issue in our normal issue, tracker and tag it with needs, change, notice and we'll get one written up and documented.

A

Let's see the main website backdrop: CMS org we've been on backdrop now, ported it to backup. For a couple weeks, it's just going along fine. We haven't had any bug reports, since we switched a backdrop which is pretty remarkable. The main thing we're working on right now with the flagship website is: we are working on building out the project browser that is list of modules, themes, layouts, etc.

A

This is part of the project module and the update server that was talking about earlier, but we're simultaneously working on during the code and the design for it, and so we got our first revision of the modules page design this past week. Darius, who did our website and the admin theme style guide, is currently working on building out the project browser. We only have one page or block up so far, but it's looking really great.

A

There's a link to it in the in the agenda document hearing it faces into the hangout for your guys's enjoyment as well. So there's how much to it at this point. It's really just one page that shows you a listing of modules. It's really more just a testament to how nice theories can make anything, look even matter how simple it is good.

A

um Okay, later on after we get the project browser built out, we're going to be working on a showcase. You know a listing a service provider, backdrop and jobs board, but all of those things are all down the pipeline. All right for backdrop itself.

A

The next point releases to be determined, bugfix released. One point, 0 point 6, the last version 1.0 point 5 came out last week as a security release and I coordinated with the Drupal team. Again and since then, we haven't really run across anything significant, but as we collect bug fixes, um once we get a substantial amount of them, then we'll release the next bug-fix release.

A

Let's see the next minor release, 1.1 of backdrop is scheduled for May 1525 team, and we have a couple of major items in there that we're trying to get accomplished the one that we've been saying that we've been trying to get, but it's probably the furthest behind, is we're trying to build a rich text editor for 1.1 and that probably well not probably, but almost certainly will be ckeditor, integrating it directly into integrate a whistling functionality of selecting different textural text, editors and things like that, integrating that directly into filter module and then adding a ckeditor module.

A

That's in a great begin to filter directly. On top of that, so that's issue 101 in our queue we still haven't, made a whole lot of progress on this I'm, hoping maybe what we can pull off is that we will at least enhance the filter module to support the toggling of text formats and associating those with text editor. um Maybe that will include.

A

Maybe that will include a really lightweight, so you can edit or module, but if not, it would be nice just to get the infrastructure in place in filter module so that we can have the base functionality of like WYSIWYG module from Drupal 7 built-in directly into filter module.

A

Let's see next item in 1.1 is we are going to be integrating token module into core. This is coming along really great. It's issue: 4 80 jen has been working on this for the past couple of weeks.

A

She's got the dialog working and integrating again uh and she's got tokens inserting, and she has most of the integrations already merged into their appropriate modules, which is fantastic. um The only parts that she's continuing to work on that admin completed is is getting them all distributed like all of the integrations into all of the appropriate modules.

A

So, thanks for coming along, let's see a pasado module path on a module are trying to get into 1.1 uh Jeff serendipity who's here with us on the call made some initial progress a couple weeks ago, merging the same path on very deep at module, but I, don't think, there's been much since then. um Do you have anything you you want to add: jeff shake your head, Horry.

A

Okay, no all right uh all right and the last thing that we've got need to give hugs. Okay awesome, so things are making some progress. Yeah the API changes for a changing cath, auto into party Pat module is yeah. A significant part of it would definitely be some changes to the API because it won't be path. Auto anymore, it'll just be part of path, so understandable, okay, the last item we've got for 1.1 is we're working on an updated administrative theme.

A

The look and feel of administrative theme and Wes has been taking the lead on that. We made a new branch last week, the 1x new style branch that currently includes three separate pull requests. I, think it includes the pagers messages and font changes, but as we get new additional pull requests that are ready to go in I'm, going to be merging those into that quand on X, new style branch, and that will allow us to have things that are that are that is moving forward.

A

But right now it looks pretty broken because there are things of all different sizes right now, because the font size increased, and so some things are bigger and some things are smaller and it just looks a little bit funky right now, but wes is doing a great job splitting up those issues and tackling them one at a time. What's do you have anything you'd like to add status, update wise.

B

Going a little slow right now, but I think I'm going to speed us up one fire another this week and knock out a lot of stuff and that having that branch is really helpful, I'm actually getting that right now. So! Ok, that's! It is.

A

Anything in that the new style branch that you would like to see merge sooner rather than later, to help facilitate integrating between the different Paul requests. I.

B

Think I think just getting the font and there's probably the biggest deal I, don't I, don't think, there's anything else really and that that included the body font size change. That should be all we need that shared between all these tats, so I think we're good yeah.

A

Okay, that's what I thought as well, that we just need to get that fun in and then that kind of applied to everything: okay, excellent yeah, it's looking really great. The new fonts just looks, looks great. It's it's nice-looking contemporary again that, like the the styles, have been changing slowly but steadily for sure for last mmm six, seven years, eight years since seven was created, so it feels really great to be up with the times again all right. Let's see continuous improvements, we're always working on improving things throughout core.

A

In the categories of user experience and developer experience, there are not really tags, but we put in square brackets. You x, + DX into our issue, q1 any issues that improved user experience or developer experience for the most part developer experience issues we're still trying to improve those where we can by improving documentation, but for the most part, developer experience is kind of locked in for the one dot X branch until until we roll around it too so user experience improvements, though happening all the time.

A

So if you have anything, you'd like to see improved in in backdrop final, an issue tag it with you x in the title and we would love to get to it.

A

Sprints we sprint every Thursday right after this meeting, we all kind of just hang out in IRC do what we can to move back drop forward, I'm still going to be working on project module today, but if there's anything else that needs attention also be looking at pull, requests and marching the ones that we've got outstanding.

A

Let's see we're in IRC impound backdrop and for general discussion, westover reddit channel subreddit gorgeous backdrop at reddit com in their weekly agenda. If you're interested in attending these meetings, we have an ical feed of the schedule of all of our meetings that happens every Thursday. We also have an ical feed of all backup events, in which backdrop will be in attendance for or sponsoring or or we will have a presence at some kind.

A

Let's see and mid camp nuts that was last week, mid camp was great. It was last week a really good time. The next major event that we will be attending will be drupalcon, but we will not have an official presence at drupalcon of any sort, but we will be having an after hours event. That is just in tandem with which Rubicon, so it will be off the premise: Jen looked at a couple of meeting spaces, it looks like the most likely thing.

A

We'll do is we'll do something on friday, so tuesday, wednesday thursday, is the traditional drupalcon dates, but monday is usually training and friday is usually sprinting, and so we will be there for the entire week in drupal. Con la but the backdrop day will be friday, which will be actually be May fifteenth, which will be the day of our 1.1 release.

A

So we will probably be working our asses off getting 1.1, ready, drupalcon and then on Friday night we will be having a backdrop dinner location to be determined, but it's looking like it'll, probably be Friday night, May fifteenth.

A

Let's see, we also got your watchdog article coming out in May. That should be right before triple con and we've got two articles in there. One Jen wrote that is all about backdrop and the functionality that is included in and a little sidebar that that I wrote. That is just an faq on backdrop. So that's it that's backdrop in a nutshell.

A

For this week we like to open it up at the end of the call for anyone who has joined, joined in, to add anything if they have anything to say um anything from you guys in that in the gallery. Here.

B

I'm having an issue on one of my pull requests being a markup snob I wanted to remove the little ROK, lo guys from the actual markup and put them in using CSS right, um and it's throwing all the tests, errors and I've I think I've proved. That's definitely me removing those little arrows, it's ruining it and the test code is just like, like I've tried like doing a find and like okay, this is my test and removing thing is just like: it's not working.

B

So anyone who has test those tests, simple test test experience that I could use some help. Okay,.

A

Awesome heavy did you remove it from so? This is in the breadcrumb that you're removing those little arrows from. Did you remove it in I? Think rum, or did you put it an override in the 17 and seven yep? You didn't overwrite yeah I didn't want to mess.

B

Up mess that up for the current version, yeah, let.

A

B

It up the next point release if we want to do that. Yeah.

A

Totally um yeah I think that's the right would go for the time being. We really need to wait to 29 x to actually modify the mark-up, but yeah okay. um If nobody else gives you additional help their help I'll work on that as well, because most of the pull request right now, our style guide changes so as I'm going through the reviews. If there's nothing else, to knock out or nothing else that needs merging right away, it can help resolve, resolve the test failures as well.

A

Alright, in advance yeah.

C

I have a couple questions: oh hey John shoot. So the first one is about your update strategy. Was there any worth looking into possibly using the releases feeds that you can get through github that numbers the releases that a project has.

A

No I was not aware of such a thing. I will look into this I.

C

Have a need for that something similar on something I'm doing here at UC Irvine, where I'm now moving all of my modules to to get up and I want to be able to check for them being up to date, get up provides a feed with some information about what tags and releases are available. I was just thinking we could use something like that. It's in JSON format.

A

Yeah, that's that's excellent. I have not heard of that um a couple of things that we might be able to leverage that, but there are a couple reasons why we couldn't use it right away, primarily because um the update module that we ported from triple seven. We did a real, minimal, porting job on and right now it actually is connecting to backdrop CMS work to get its update list. So, at least for the one point 0 point, X release. All of those sites are currently checking backdrop CMS org for updates hello.

A

It's it's interesting like the possibilities and what we might be able to do there. You might want to.

C

Continue having in the states of the modules be proxied through that site anyway, on the getup feeds our rate limited at this point probably would be a problem, but if you continue to grow, you might start running into issues. Yeah.

A

And we also long-term, although github is our canonical repository right now. We also would like to make sure that we can grow and be more flexible with other source code repositories, like you know, like Google Code shut down recently or they're they're, currently officially like in read-only mode and will actually be shut down.

A

But google code was like the canonical source code place for a long time before github and before Google Code, there was sourceforge, so I think I mean there's a life cycle to all of these things, and eventually we may need to live in a post, github world and that might be like good bucket or a mic, something new that we've not heard of yet so so.

C

A

All of the tools that are available, it would love to look into them so but yeah for the time being will probably continue practicing because it's it's not only the easiest path forward. It's also the one that that would be most flexible, so yeah.

C

I came across a thread on drupal.org about recording their stuff on to get lab, which is a you know, a get up like tool and.

D

C

An interesting read, yeah. My second question is about the version numbering so with Jen's changes to token flag. Module can take advantage of those for the tokens that it offers. So is there a versioning numbering methodology for contributes to correspond to the various versions of the core ya.

A

Can trim modules right now we're following the convention of Drupal that we are versioning them with 1x or whatever the major API version is, in this case London X dash and then a semantic version, so 1 dot x prefix is the API compatibility version. What we're going to do with token module. So all tokens that are currently token module should be in one point one point: oh so there should be total compatibility with all modules that are currently leveraging those existing tokens.

A

They shouldn't be any changes there but token module itself when we move it into core. What I think we'll probably do is we will forcibly have core claim the token namespace and use um there's some function for this. Well, it could be the persistent requirements or some other mechanism where we will disable any token module that is currently installed on the website and prevent anybody from turning it back on again. Basically, what to say token is now reserved namespace.

A

You can never turn on the module name token ever again, and in that way we won't end up with contributing a token and core providing a token something along those right.

C

Yeah I've got a dependency on token, but I was able to factor that out based on the code that Janet forked for the work she was doing now. The next version of flag module will be dependent upon backdrop, 1.1 or newer and so I'm doing. If there's a way to indicate that or a strategy for that in the numbering of contributes yeah.

A

You know I hadn't thought about that. One, a module specifically saying it depends on token. um Hadn't occurred to me. I'm, not.

C

Sure you're not talking so much as it will depend on the 1.1 core or newer right.

A

Yeah yeah and that that you can do just by using the dot info file is that right this.

A

So in the gut yeah in the dot info file, you can say yeah, although we almost always use equal to 1 dot x, you can say if you want to greater than or equal to 1 dot one, and it will do a version string check, saying your module depends on one point: one or higher.

C

Okay got it thanks: yeah.

A

Cool, that's great any other questions.

D

Working on a module that depends on the drupal registry I'm not too familiar with dealing with that part of the code, a database table and um file classes and that type of thing, um maybe uh some basic pointers or I, didn't spend too much time on it. So I know that um I know Nate. You work on making that something doin back up and I wonder if you could just say a couple pieces about that.

A

Yeah so yeah that the class registry, one of the veins of every Drupal developers, existence, I, think so. Class registry in Drupal 7 was a database table that contained a list of all classes and which files they were in and whenever so there's there's a function in PHP called SPL, autoload I think it is, and what that is. Is it's a function that lets you specify a callback that when a class is instantiated, it will automatically call that function and try to find where that class lives and then instantiate a new instance of that class.

A

So we're using a PHP core feature for autoloading and in Drupal 7. What that callback did? Is it queried a database table to see which file contained, which classes and then would load that file? And if the class is found, then I would say true a return.

A

True, I found the class the downside of that is that well for one, it required doing a database query to load class, which is just really dumb and second of all, it is that if that registry ever got corrupted like a class was missing or the table was empty, you could get into a situation where drupal was unable to function or load in any way whatsoever, because some of its classes were no longer in the database table, and so there was a project called registry rebuild that would not use a Drupal.

A

Bootstrapper use a really really really lightweight, with triple boot, strap to rebuild the class registry manually. But all that was a giant headache. So in backdrop we don't have a class registry. In the same way we have instead of a database table, we have a hook that is uncashed, that is called every page load for hook, auto load info. And so, if your module provides a class, you need to implement hook, auto load info, and you can go look at any core module for an example of this system: module, node, module, comment, module, etc.

A

They'll have some classes in there and that's just a pure map between the class name and the file that contains that class yeah, so I'm not really Andy watch which module are you working on that requires that modifies the registry table directly.

D

Of the mailing system, by way that is a mail system, my mail, mail, chimp man, jewel simple news: gotcha, okay,.

A

Yeah so first of all, I would say, um make sure you're looking and working on the two dot X version of that module. Not this current stable but the the unstable one, because the old version of that module did something crazy and that was it would dynamically right, a PHP file to your files, directory a whole class to your files directory and then I bet it registered that class in the registry that it created. All of that is just freaking crazy.

A

The new version of the module comes with a single class that handles all functionality, so it doesn't need to make new classes on the fly. It always just uses one class and then it routes it routes. The options through it to to combine like whatever mahler system is like smtp or mandrel, with your formatting module like my mail. So so, hopefully, if you use the new version, if use the new version of the module instead of the current stable version, then you won't have to modify the registry at all.

A

But if you do have to modify the registry anyway in backdrop, it's just as simple as specifying the new classes. In that kolkata load info, although because that hook is uncashed and called every page load, it's best not to do anything dynamic or anything. That requires a anything that requires a database query so trying to make that as fast as possible. No matter what.

A

Okay, all right! Well, thanks everybody for joining. As always, we will get together again next week and until then I will see on most or all of you guys in IRC or on github. So thanks so much for joining bye, guys.