Drush Make, a module of mine, has been making waves in the Drupal community since it was released. Its primary goal is to take a file defining a list of modules and themes, or in Drush Make lingo, projects, and create a fully operational Drupal site out of them. Now you can use these same Drush Make files in installation profiles and they will be properly packaged on drupal.org.

Installation Profiles traditionally have been a piece of PHP code that tells Drupal what to do when the site is installed. When one used to download that install profile, they would just get that file. If the install profile author wanted modules used besides code module (for example, a WYSIWYG), one would have to download it after they download the profile. However, Drush Make has changed this.

Drupal.org, using Drush Make as a backend, now allows modules and themes to come with profiles, all in the same file. This represents a major step in installation profiles, as now they are much more useful.

read more