"Cross Posted from Drupal.org"
Welcome to the inaugural entry in the "This Week in Drupal Core" series, which aims to highlight cool happenings in and around Drupal core for people who don't have their home pages set to http://drupal.org/project/issues/user (as shocking as it may be to hear, apparently these people exist ;)).
Overall, energy in the core queue has largely been spent around readying things for DrupalCon Prague (in just a few short days, EEEEE!), which means a particular focus on un-blocking various initiatives, completing conversions, and improving developer experience so our presentations are a lot less embarrassing. :D
Notable Commits
The best of git log --since "1 week ago" --pretty=oneline (97 commits in total):
- #1203886: Remove PHP module from core: And there was much rejoicing, especially from the security team and anyone who's had to support a Drupal site ever. :) Shout-out to @Rob Loach, who's offered to maintain this as a contributed module.
- #2083811: Remove langcode nesting for fields in entity structures.: In what might be called the biggest DX (developer experience) improvement of the decade, you no longer need that weird 'und' stuff to refer to a field. Hooray! Thanks, @yched and @plach!
- #1983554: Remove BC-mode from EntityNG: In an EPIC undertaking, @plach, @effulgentsia, and @Berdir managed to successfully remove the old backwards-compatibility layer we'd added to keep D8 stable while various things were ported to the new entity system. Removing these types of layers is a really important step in resolving some of the known performance regressions in Drupal 8 at the moment.
- Speaking of performance, #1927174: Make the Toolbar administration menu sub tree rendering more efficient also went in, resolving one of the biggest front-end performance regressions in Drupal 8 as well. YEAH!
- #2084309: Enable Entity reference in the standard profile. A nice, simple patch went in from @amateescu that simply enables the useful Entity Reference field in the standard profile, so it's more visible to people who install Drupal 8 for the first time. Rock!
- #2055853: Numerous Block UX improvements: @tim.plunkett is leading the charge in vastly improving the UX around the new block features in Drupal 8 to make it more accessible to site builders. Thanks to @jessebeach, @tkoleary, and @Bojhan for the assistance! Lookin' good. :)
- #1971384: Menu router conversions: 58 issues remain, 145 are done (71% complete!). To help expedite the remaining ones so we can finally remove the old router bits from Drupal 8, conversion patches will now follow a vastly simplified conversion process. The first of these was committed, and there are now no more non-test, non-form callbacks that haven't been converted. Please feel free to assist with one of the other 3 big patches. It would be AMAZING to get these all done by the contribution sprint at Prague!
- On "#SunDXay," a number of low-hanging fruit but important DX fixes went into Drupal 8, including #2051097: Change 'pattern' to 'path' in routing.yml files and consistently reference native PHP classes inline. The list of DX fixes is starting to pile up, but there's more work to be done, too. As always, help is greatly appreciated, especially if you're new to Drupal 8 development!
Drupal 8 Around the Interwebs
Blog posts about Drupal 8 and how much it's going to rock your face.
- @chx is offering to help you with your Drupal 8 questions, in an attempt to help folks up the Drupal 8 learning curve. Rock!
- The Future of PHP is ... Here Already by Lorna Mitchell covers some of the new features in PHP 5.3 that Drupal 8 makes use of and why they're awesome!
- In Drupal 8 multilingual tidbits 14: intro to content and configuration, Gábor Hojtsy provides a great overview of content vs. configuration entities in Drupal 8 and how multilingual features intersect. If multilingual grabs you and you're planning to attend DrupalCon, you might also want to check out how post on All the multilingual content at DrupalCon Prague
- OO in D8: Inheritance vs. Aggregation (Part 3), a post by @tstoeckler, part of a three-part mini series where he distills lessons learned from his attendance at Symfony Summit.
- Lots of folks are blogging about beginning steps in making Drupal 8 modules, including by @rteijeiro, Drupal 8 module development #1 - kicking off by lirantal. Thanks so much for sharing what you've learned so others can benefit!
- Brandonian wrote up Exploring Drupal 8: Laying out the vision of a geospatial platform on the next version of Drupal that lays out a plan of attack for porting mapping features in Drupal 8 contrib.
- petermallett did a webinar on Drupal 8 RESTful services, which looks to provide a fairly comprehensive overview of the new web services features in Drupal 8.
- In Drupal 8 as an intuitive platform, brianV helps to address some concerns raised around the developer experience of Drupal 8.
Drupal 8 in Meat-Space
DrupalCon Prague is next week! Both before and after the conference (September 21 - 29), there will be extended Drupal 8 sprints and Sprint Day on Friday, where hoards of Drupal developers will gather in order to actively work on a range of Drupal 8 topics including multilingual, web services, mobile, accessibility, and more!
If you've never been to a sprint before, essentially it's groups of people with laptops and whiteboards, seated around tables which each have a focus on a specific topic area (and normally have candy, too! ;)). There are both technical and non-technical topics, so everyone is welcome! You sit down at a table, ask for something to work on (or bring a suggestion of your own) and collaborate directly with lead core developers on the various aspects of Drupal 8. It's a wonderful way to meet friends, learn new things, and have a tangible impact on making Drupal 8 awesome!
Sound like fun to you? Sign up for the before/after DrupalCon sprints, and come by on Friday for either the Contribution Sprints if you want to get down to business, or the Getting Involved with Core Sprint if you'd like a bit more hand-holding and specific direction from mentors.
Whew! That's a wrap!
Busy week! :) Hope you found this helpful, and see you in Prague! If you'd like to volunteer for helping to draft these posts, please ping webchick on IRC. :)
