After providing a brief summary of common pitfalls in working with Drupal (included the dreaded Dev/Test/Prod problem), this presentation illustrates the usefulness of developing with Features and Installation Profiles to create fully revisioned sites capable of one-click deployment.

1. Features + Installation Profiles
February 24, 2012

2. David Watson
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Web Developer
Experimental Media and
Performing Arts Center (EMPAC)
Adjunct Professor
Web Systems Development
Drupal Consultant
~3 years in the community
Specialized Generalist

3. Best Practices
Revision Control
Dev/Test/Prod workflow
One-click Deployment

4. Revision Control
Easier collaboration with conflict handling
Change history
Ability to revert
Easier to merge in new code
Best Practice: Use it.
Reality: This is hard to do for sites!

5. Dev/Test/Prod
Workstations check out code from Dev server
Patches are reviewed, committed to Dev
Possibly running Jenkins/Hudson
Release candidates are pushed to Test/Staging
environment
Final release pushed to Production along with
any staged content

6. Dev/Test/Prod
Best Practice: Use a workflow like this to ensure
that only production-quality code is running on
production servers.
Reality: This is hard to do for sites!

7. One-click Deployment
End-users shouldn't have to configure their sites,
that's what we're here for!
Best practice: Let the installer do all of the
heavy lifting, providing sane defaults site-wide
Reality: ...You get the idea.

8. Drupal Database
Data
Nodes
Fields
...
Configuration
Content Types
Field Info
Rules
Views Settings
Variables

9. Drupal Deployment Challenges
How do we deploy our Drupal instances from one
box to another?
Moving the database?
Manually duplicating configuration changes?

10. Drupal Deployment Challenges
How to we use revision control with Drupal?
Works great with modules, but what about our
configuration?
Add SQL dumps to the repository?

11. Drupal Deployment Challenges
How do we achieve one-click deployment?
Modules are handled through dependencies...
What about our configuration?
Write some sort of custom installation script?

12. THE Drupal Deployment Challenge
All of these problems can be reduced to one:
configuration that lives in the database instead
of the code
How do we move as much configuration into
code as possible, and load it when the site is
first installed?

13. The Answer
Installation Profiles provide a means of one-
click (or even fully automated!) deployment for
modules and themes
Features provide a means of exporting
configuration to code as feature modules, used
to satisfy a specific use case

14. Installation Profiles
Core functionality
Allows users to perform one-time setup tasks
during installation, based on presets
Install and enable modules/themes
Run custom code
Can be used to package modules and themes
Possible to select through the UI and through
drush site-install!

15. Anatomy of an Install Profile
Exist in profiles/PROFILENAME
Within each...
PROFILENAME.info – metadata/dependencies
PROFILENAME.install – installation-specific hooks
PROFILENAME.profile – other hooks
modules/ - modules packaged with this profile
themes/ - themes packaged in the profile
libraries/ - Libraries API looks here for libs

16. Features
Contrib module that allows for exporting existing
configuration as modules
First, some terminology...

17. Features Terminology
Features refers to the Features module
Features packages components together - bits
of configuration for individual modules, like
individual views
These components are taken from modules that
integrate with Features, usually by providing
CTools exportables
The feature modules that Features creates
contain the components that you select

18. Why Features?
Feature modules can be committed to version
control
Code is more portable than database between
Dev/Test/Prod
Overrides to feature modules can be reverted to
their default state
Hooks can be added to the module later
(remember, feature modules are just modules!)

19. Commonly Used
Boxes – What custom blocks should've been
Views – All views are exportable!
Rules – Also exportable. Very handy when
working w/ Drupal Commerce!
Strongarm – Makes the variables table
exportable
UUID – Paired with other modules to provide
unique identifiers for content that won't change
depending on the order they're installed

20. Special Cases
Not everything is exportable
Make it exportable, and contribute a patch!
Last resort: hook_(un)install()
Content-based Configuration?
Boxes module for blocks
Defaultcontent for nodes
Drupal Commerce7 in progress...

21. Putting it all together
Features provides the means of separating
configuration from content
Install Profiles allow for packaging of modules
(contrib/devel/features/custom) and themes,
while offering one-click deployment

22. Features Workflow
Perform configuration in the UI
Export config as a feature and move to
profiles/PROFILENAME/modules/features/
Implement any necessary hooks in the
feature's .module file
Make sure the install profile depends on the new
feature
Reinstall the site and test

23. Site Development Workflow
Create an install profile
Download/write contrib/custom modules
Required libraries should go in the profile's libraries/
directory
Create core feature for site-wide settings, add to
profile's .info
Repeat feature creation for all other functionality
Remember, features are modules too; you can
depend on other features!

24. Site Theming Workflow
Create an install profile
Download/create (sub)themes in
profiles/PROFILENAME/themes
In .install file...
theme_enable(THEMENAME);
variable_set('theme_default', THEMENAME);
*hack hack hack*

25. Example
Aqueduct Install Profile
Heavily commented
Uses Features to export configuration settings
Play, experiment, use as a base, send
suggestions/patches for improvement, enjoy!

26. Questions?

27. Get in Touch!
d.o – davidwatson
e – dmw@davidwatson.name
t - @caughtexception
in – linkedin.com/in/davidmwatson