features-servers

I’ve been looking for some decent ways of managing the use of modules hosted in random Features Servers. Particularly, how do I use Drush as seamlessly with a Features Server as it works with Drupal.Org?

It turns out that Drush has a lot of special options buried in the pm-download (dl) command, the very Drush maneuver most helpful for my goal. Naturally, these options can be included in a Bash Alias for Drush.

Working on integrating the Features Server feature into OpenAtrium. My intention is to set it up as another Casetracker Project type.

OpenAtrium provides a solid case tracker and documentation system, and is a natural fit for the infrastructure of a Drupal.Org-style project ecosphere. Integrating them will allow me to post Features I’ve created to a place where I might actually have a means to get feedback on my work, let alone provide support.

This was supposed to be my next blog post, when I finished mulling it over. Then I saw @open_atrium twitter the exact words.

I’ve been wondering what good a Feature Server is if every individual server had to handle it’s own marketing if anyone was going to learn about it. Google is a bit hard to use with keywords like “Drupal Feature”.

It turns out that running your own Feature Server isn’t that complicated. Get a Drupal site. Install the fserver feature. It’s most exotic requirements are Filefield and Context, and context is just their to facilitate easy block placement of release information.

All the feature really does is provide a fancy XML Views style plugin, a couple content types with their CCK fields to specify things like version information, and some special file-handling magic to push files and tarballs around.

Feature Servers have great potential to help structure the use of code sourced outside the formal ecosphere around Drupal.Org this has it’s pro’s and con’s, but I already see their usefulness in providing a little more structure to issue-queue code exchanges and organization-internal modules. So let’s bring Drush into this and boost the ease of use of that usefulness another step up.