Read our Roadmap to understand how this work falls into priorities set by the Drupal Association with direction and collaboration from the Board and community.

Project News

Get Ready for Drupal 9

The next minor release of Drupal will be 8.9 - to be released simultaneously with Drupal 9.0. The first target window for the release is this coming June, so now is the best time to get ready for the release.

As it turns out, many contributed or even custom modules only need a one-line change to be ready for Drupal 9. Check yours using: the upgrade status module, or the Drupal Check command line tool.

DrupalCon Minneapolis 2020

DrupalCon MinneapolisSpeaking of Drupal 9, DrupalCon Minneapolis is coming up from May 18-20. We expect their to be a large amount of programming and contribution focused on the upcoming release of Drupal 9. Minneapolis will be a great opportunity to get help with checking your module compatibility, or to find someone who can help you get your Drupal 7 or 8 site ready for the upgrade. Get your tickets now, before prices go up!

DrupalCon Europe 2020

Did you hear the news? DrupalCon Europe 2020 has been announced - and DrupalCon is coming back to Barcelona from Sep 14-17th.

Our partnership with Kuoni Congress continues, and we're excited to join you in beautiful Spain to celebrate Drupal 9 together.

Kuoni Congress

Mark your calendars, and bookmark the site - more info coming soon!

Drupal.org Update

Have you unwrapped automatic updates yet?

In November we finished the primary engineering work to support Phase 1 of the Automatic Updates initiative. In December we completed validation and testing, and launched the first stable release of the Automatic Updates module.

In its current form, Automatic Updates is available as a contributed module for both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8. After installing the module you'll be able to take advantage of three new features: 

  • When the Drupal Security Team identifies a critical release, they'll be able to publish a PSA that will be directly displayed in your admin interface. 
  • The module will run automated readiness checks to make sure your site is ready for the update, or to let you know if there are errors you need to fix.
  • The module will automatically apply Drupal core updates. 

What about automatic updates for contributed modules and composer dependencies?

The next phase of work on the Automatic Updates initiative is to support updates for contributed modules, and for sites managing Composer dependencies.

This is where we need your help! We're looking for organizational sponsors to help move this work forward. If you're interested in helping us move the initiative into the next phase, please contact the Association.

We want to thank: The European Commission, Acquia, Tag1, Mtech, and Pantheon for their support of Phase 1.

Expanding Drupal Solution content with Feature pages

About two years ago we decided to start featuring Drupal Solutions on Drupal.org. These Solutions are examples of Drupal being used in the real world in specific use cases. Our first series of this content was the Drupal Industry pages, highlighting the power for Drupal in specific industry verticals.

In December, we've just launched our next set of content, this time focusing on specific features of Drupal that set it apart from the competition. These Feature pages talk about the specific Drupal Solutions that are built around key features of the software.

Updating our packaging pipeline

Do you know what goes into a packaged release of Drupal? It's not just a git clone - and as of Drupal 8.8.0 the package you download from Drupal.org also includes Composer scaffold files.  As Drupal evolves, the way we deliver the software to users has to evolve along with it.

To support the increasingly sophisticated packaging process for Drupal, we started work on overhauling our packaging pipeline for Drupal releases. This work continues into January.

Preparing for contrib Semver

As part of Drupal 9's release we are working to migrate all of the projects on Drupal.org to properly use semantic versioning. Right now, contributed modules typically use a version format like: 7.x-1.6 or 8.x-1.7. The first part of this is just the platform version (D7 vs. D8), and the second part is the Major version and the Patch version.

We'll be migrating this version schema so that the current Major version remains the Major version, the current Patch version becomes the Minor version, and we'll add the ability to define new patch versions.

This enables several improvements. Firstly, contrib maintainers can now follow backwards compatibility policies similar to core, i.e: Major versions with backwards compatibility breaking changes, minor version with new features, and patch versions for bug fixes and security releases.  Secondly, because contributed modules can now be compatible with both Drupal 8 and Drupal 9, contrib semver will be an important part of keeping version management sane.

We've made some initial progress in that direction, and have a roadmap for completing this support.

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As always, we’d like to say thanks to all the volunteers who work with us, and to the Drupal Association Supporters, who make it possible for us to work on these projects. In particular, we want to thank:

If you would like to support our work as an individual or an organization, consider becoming a member of the Drupal Association.

Follow us on Twitter for regular updates: @drupal_org, @drupal_infra

https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/whats-new-on-drupalorg-december-2019