BoF sessions and ideas from the European DrupalCon 2012

The DrupalCon Munich 2012 is just over. There were quite a few inspiring sessions, but here are a few highlights of the moments and topics where the Nuvole team was mostly involved.

Code-Driven Development: another training... and what about Drupal 8?

We held the pre-conference Nuvole training about Code-Driven Development (Features, Makefiles, a set of techniques for effective Drupal programming) at DrupalCon Europe for the first time, after two successful editions at DrupalCon Chicago 2011 and DrupalCon Denver 2012. Nice to see that there are more and more training attendees who are already familiar with the tools but still want to see the big picture and find out how to really streamline their Drupal development.

And what's coming with Drupal 8? We followed with great attention Greg Dunlap's Munich session to understand the impact of the Configuration Management Initiative on the Code-Driven workflow we advocate. There will surely be disruptive changes, but in the end Drupal will be improving a lot as far as configuration management is concerned. And Features won't die: part of its functionality (the import/export itself) will be taken over by Drupal core, but Features will be able to refocus as a tool to package configuration. And it's time for Nuvole too to stop lurking on the CMI group and start showing up more frequently on issue queues!

BoF: Automating Drupal Development

The BoF session about Automating Drupal Development was packed, as many developers shared their secrets to effective Drupal Development.

The basic idea was how to get rid of all repetitive tasks in Drupal Development and automate as much as possible: building the code base (Drush Make), creating the installation profile from templates, storing and packaging configuration with modular Features and a Features server, rely on an automated testing framework activated at every code change. Tools we discussed are mostly the same as in our Barcelona DrupalDays presentation, with the addition of Capistrano and Webistrano.

BoF: The future of Open Atrium: getting it done

The BoF about the future of Open Atrium was to bring together the core Open Atrium team, working for Phase2 Technology, and companies and consultants that, like Nuvole, provide Open Atrium services: if we wish to move from talk to action, multiple parties will need to help. Here's an outline:

1. Update core and modules to their D7 version, update the Blog (to become "Discussion") and Book features, introduce the concept of "Organizations" to be able to apply certain criteria (e.g., inclusion in a group) to multiple users.
2. Adopt a new, mobile-friendly, responsive, theme.
3. Migrate the other Atrium features.

Development is expected to start soon with the creation of a Drupal 7 branch for all involved features. The basic Open Atrium structure will be ported to Drupal 7 as soon as possible, to give all community members the opportunity to help. A development version will be regularly made available for people to follow progress.

Lower priority items, which could appear after the Open Atrium 2.0 release (based on Drupal 7), like in version 2.1, include a full content migration path from OpenAtrium 1.x and adding new functionality. But the discussion is open and if you want to help shaping the future of Open Atrium just get involved!

Tags: Code Driven Development, Drupal Planet, DrupalCon, Open AtriumImage: