How To: Finding & Testing Out New Modules

Matt Petrowsky — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:59:25 +0000

Drupal changes so fast that it's hard to keep your head above water. Only now, are many site maintainers deciding to upgrade to version 6. The biggest reason for the delay, despite the amount of time version 6 has been out, is the slow going with various modules being updated.

So the question is... "How do I keep current with modules?", and "What new modules replace the modules I've been using?".

Well, much of this lies on your shoulders - such as reading the news. Fortunately, there are some tricks you can employ to get the information you need quickly.

In this video, I talk about the sites, tools and methods I use to keep up-to-date and notified about new modules and what modules provide which features.

If you're interested in yet even more information about how I research modules then this video might help you out.

Here is the list of links I use for keeping up-to-date.

If you're simply in need of the code I reference in the video article, then it's right here to copy/paste.

Note: Change the my_drupal_root with the path to your drupal install location on your development machine. The following are functions you place into your .bashrc file.

d6mod()
{
MODULE="${1}"; cd my_drupal_root/sites/all/modules/; \
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib co -d ./$MODULE contributions/modules/$MODULE
}

d6theme()
{
THEME="${1}"; cd my_drupal_root/sites/all/themes/; \
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib co -d ./$THEME contributions/themes/$THEME
}

drevs()
{
cvs log "${1}" | egrep 'DRUPAL-.*:' | sort
}

GotDrupal.com | Drupal Tutorial Site - module research

How To: Finding & Testing Out New Modules