Recently I've made several remarks on Twitter about the pain of using the Features module for install profiles. Since they weren't universally understood, I've decided to blog a bit about what is one of my pet topics: the problem of default configuration.

The problem
Requirements:

1. An install profile / distribution needs to be able to export and provide default configuration (content types, fields, variables, etc).
2. The user needs to be able to revert to default configuration when desired.
3. The user needs to be able to "untrack" any piece of configuration, allowing it to be deleted.
4. The user needs to be able to export and version his own export of the configuration, maintaining his changes across distribution upgrades.

The last two requirements are not satisfiable with Features, because Features has no concept of "default configuration" over regular configuration.

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