Last week was BADcamp and like many I opted to join in on getting some Drupal work done before and between sessions. Step one, looking through my dashboard to see what's in the backlog. Lots of issues and patches for the delete all module. Got that cleaned up, mostly. On to Drupal 8. Now, I had worked on a couple patches way earlier this year for D8, but things have changed.

Drupal 8 requires PHP 5.3 now, so first step, get a virtual machine going with PHP 5.3. Downloaded the new Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Now, I like Ubuntu, but man, Unity is painful. Simply switching screens from OS X over to the VM would cause the Unity search to overlay the screen, not to mention that it was taking up 10% of my screen space with junk I'll never click. Fortunately, it wasn't too difficult to remove Unity and replace with gnome classic then install the rest of the needed LAMP stack components.

Now, finally with a VM meeting the requirements I could install Drupal 8. Create a new MySQL database, Git clone like normal (takes a while, we've gone from 3.42 MB to 4.5 MB), open the tarball and see there is still a default.settings.php (guess I haven't been paying attention enough, as I thought CMI was going to fully get rid of it in favor of yml configs) and copy it over to settings.php and make it writeable.

Ok, next step, run the installer. Hmm, well I had uninstalled Firefox, so guess I'll install Chrome. Except, as it turns out, it's apparently quite difficult to get a hold of a download URL for the google chrome debian package. Even using lynx led to failures for both chrome and chromium sites as they both required Javascript. Oh well, re-install Firefox. Maybe I should have tried installing Drupal using lynx, never know, may work.

Run installer. Can't install, need PHP GD libraries. Oh that's right, we need image manipulation tools just to run Drupal, cause that makes sense, right? Ok, sudo apt-get install php5-gd and we're good. Now to fill out the install form. Try root@localhost for e-mail, no dice, which I suppost conforms to the spec although I liked finding an old comment from Dries says we want to intentionally make that work. Ok, root@localhost.lan it is I guess. Next step.. Great! Wait, hmm. Click a link and get a 404. Drupal seems to have enabled clean URLs by default even though I hadn't set Apache up to support them. That's no good. Didn't the installer used to warn about that and turn Clean URLs off by default? Ok, click back button. Hmm, this doesn't work because I'm running into an #overlay link.

Ok, well I'll install drush and disable overlay. I mean, not totally necessary, but I know I'll be install drush at some point regardless, might as well now. Put drush in and run and then...<br>PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'The configuration directory type <em class="placeholder">active</em> does not exist.' in /drupal/core/includes/bootstrap.inc:535<br>

Well, shucks. Apparently, I need a newer version of Drush. Stable version is not gonna cut it. Ok. Dev version installed. New error:<br>Failed to write configuration file.<br>

Ahh of course, /sites/default/files doesn't have the proper permissions. Didn't the installer used to warn me about that? Today it was silent. Alright, that done, "drush dis overlay --yes". Ok, click back. Alright path to config is /admin/config so let's try ?q=admin/config. No dice, I'm back to the front page. Ok, well guess I'll go set up Apache rewrite. I of course planned to eventually set it up anyways, but how about all those people who don't? Maybe something to do with this? I feel like there is an issue to file regarding the clean URLs snafu, but with the issue queue the way it is and deadlines looming, I don't want to inadvertently create a false bug report.

Ok sudo a2enmod then a trip to the clean urls handbook page to remember what I need to add to my site config (mind you this is all setup properly on my old Ubuntu install but I had to upgrade to a new install for this and thus don't have all these settings in place).

Alright, finally, back to the Drupal I know and love. Maybe I can start testing some patches now in hopes of helping out all those fine core developers and all the great work they do. But, I can't help but think, the 2013 release schedule for Drupal 8 is starting to feel a little rushed.

Tags: Drupal Planet