This is the sixth installment in a series presenting work on shared configuration that comes out of the Drutopia initiative and related efforts, beginning with Part 1, Configuration Providers.

Our main focus has been updating configuration from distributions--specifically, the question:

How can I update my site so that I have all the latest configuration changes from a distribution--while still retaining any customizations I made?

Updates are well and good. But before packages of configuration can be updated, they need to be produced and managed in the first place. In Drupal 8 as in previous major versions, that task is the domain of the Features module.

The Drupal 8 version of Features is a complete rewrite with major improvements over previous versions. If you're familiar with previous versions but haven't used Features in Drupal 8 this backgrounder will bring you up to speed.

Despite being a development-focused tool, Features is in the top 40 or so most installed contributed Drupal 8 modules. Features is used in building and maintaining several of the more-used Drupal 8 distributions including Open Social, Varbase, Open Church, and Quick Start. It's a key build tool for the Gitlab-hosted Drutopia project.

In this installment we'll cover Features in Drupal 8, including how to use it to produce a distribution.