Simplifying CVS for Themers

Posted Mon, 06/15/2009 - 14:52 by jay

(Copy/paste of email sent by Kathleen Murtagh on June 14, 2009 4:42:45pm EDT)
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Hi all!

Lets see if we can get something done in 30 days!

To start with, I'll summarize the project's mission and goal. We want to simplify the process of committing a theme to Drupal's CVS. For a HTML/CSSer, CVS is too much of a barrier for contributing new projects, and we would like to lower that barrier as much as possible.

We had discussed that we could create a website (and Jay Batson would like that to be design.acquia.com) that would allow a user to upload a zipped file and it would automatically (or manually if we need to....) commit the contents of the file to Drupal's CVS.

Given that the end goal is to deploy this on design.acquia.com, which will include many other features from other contributors, it would be best to keep this contained into a module that can be added to the eventual design.acquia.com website as a feature. This will tremendously ease the deployment and upgrade path.

We should also keep the development path open, and plan a long term goal that is not CVS and Drupal specific. For 30 days, we can hard code Drupal/CVS, of course, but keep in mind during our development that we'll eventually want to make this flexible so the project can grow with ease.

To help move things forward, I have created a project with an empty module. If you get commit access, and email me your username, I will add you as a committer to the project.

http://drupal.org/project/simple_committer

Drupal CVS Documentation:
Apply for a CVS account: http://drupal.org/node/59
CVS Reference: http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart

We can use the issue queue for our primary discussion about the module. So we can maximize what we can get done, we should break down the tasks into small bites and assign them to each other.

We should define both the long term and short term goals, and work towards the short term goals that we can complete by mid July. Effectively, lets think agile, and our first phase is one month :) Once we get something working, we'll re-evaluate the requirements as needed.

I wrote up some initial requirements based on what we spoke about today during the keynote: http://drupal.org/node/491502

Remember: these are _requirements_, which is a little different from the specifications (like, lets use this tool, and do it exactly this way). For the nitty gritty specifications, we can discuss them in the more specific tickets.

These are the following tasks I have outlined for the next 30 days (don't worry, we can close a ticket or modify it if we think things should be different):
Project content type with file upload
http://drupal.org/node/491578
Unzip/untar and commit scripts
http://drupal.org/node/491584
Integrate commit scripts with file upload actions
http://drupal.org/node/491588
Design the user interface
http://drupal.org/node/491592
Documentation
http://drupal.org/node/491596
http://drupal.org/node/491602
Once you have commit access, you can be assigned to tasks.

I hope this is helpful! Let me know what your ideas are.

--
Kathleen Murtagh