What's new with Drupal 8?

Last week, in lieu of a This week in Drupal Core, xjm and wechick compiled a phenomenal This YEAR in Drupal Core, so here's a catch up of the last two weeks.

Happy 13th birthday, Drupal!

Drupal 1.0.0 was released on January 15th, 2001. Many software projects from that era are long forgotten by now. That we have stayed relevant and gotten stronger through 13 years of fast and chaotic evolution of the internet is, in my opinion, very impressive. Here's some highlights from the birthday:

Drupal 8 Alpha 8

For module developers who've already begun porting their modules to Drupal 8, there's a shiny new alpha8 for you to play with as of yesterday. These alphas are provided to give you something more stable to work off of than having to chase HEAD every day. If you do choose to chase HEAD though, be prepared for more volatility. For example, Move definition of menu links to hook_menu_link_defaults(), decouple key name from path, and make 'parent' explicit was a very important patch committed immediately following the alpha8 release, but requires extensive follow up changes that we are trying to resolve between now and the next alpha.

Where's Drupal 8 at in terms of release?

Last week, we fixed 7 critical issues and 11 major issues, and opened 6 criticals and 20 majors. That puts us overall at 136 release-blocking critical issues and 497 major issues.

3 beta-blocking issues were fixed last week. There are still 60 of 107 beta blockers that must be resolved and 38 change records that must be written before we can release a Drupal 8 beta.

Where can I help?

Top criticals to hit this week

Each week, we check with core maintainers and contributors for the "extra critical" criticals that are blocking other work. These issues are often tough problems with a long history. If you're familiar with the problem space of one of these issues and have the time to dig in, help drive it forward by reviewing, improving, and testing its patch, and by making sure the issue's summary is up to date and any API changes are documented.

Block 8.0.0 and possibly minor versions on critical security issues - this is an important policy discussion for making Drupal security maintenance sustainable.

Finalize module-facing API of declaring menu links - this is one of the follow up issues alluded to earlier in the section about alpha8. Declaring menu links is something that nearly every contrib module does, so let's get the DX of this right.

More ways to help

The Drupal 8 "meta meta", compiled by vijaycs85, is a great place to start if you want to dig your teeth into a technical problem but aren't sure where to start. Or if coding isn't your thing, there are plenty of issues tagged as Needs change notification. Writing these is a great way to keep abreast of recent changes - see more on change records to get started.

As always, if you're new to contributing to core, check out Core contribution mentoring hours. Twice per week, you can log into IRC and helpful Drupal core mentors will get you set up with answers to any of your questions, plus provide some useful issues to work on.

Notable Commits

The best of git log --after=2014-01-09 --pretty=oneline (and before alpha8) (65 commits in total):

#2144919 by yched, fago, effulgentsia, amateescu, tstoeckler, chx, larowlan, swentel: Allow widgets and formatters for base fields to be configured in Field UI.

#2020393 by dawehner, bdone, pcambra, oadaeh: Convert "Recent content" block to a View.

#1649780 by effulgentsia, jibran, Wim Leers, nod_, hefox, joelpittet, kaare, BarisW, sun, rbayliss, Cottser, fubhy: Remove first/last/odd/even classes in favor of CSS3 pseudo selectors.

#1862202 by plach, Berdir, katbailey, ParisLiakos, alexpott, chx, sun, larowlan, Gábor Hojtsy, cosmicdreams, vijaycs85, YesCT, penyaskito, andypost, Albert Volkman, joelpitett: Objectify the language system.

#2173719 by dawehner, tim.plunkett: Remove the fork of doctrine/common.

#2168333 by tim.plunkett, EclipseGc, yched, fago: Ensure custom EntityType controllers can be provided by modules.

#1892320 by damiankloip, linclark: Add deserialize for JSON/AJAX - now you can interact with all of Drupal's REST API via plain JSON as well as via HAL.

#2160735 by Cottser, aspilicious: Add hook_theme_suggestions_alter() - that completes item #1 from the API changes list of [meta] Theme system architecture changes.

You can also always check the Change records for Drupal core for the full list of Drupal 8 API changes from Drupal 7.

Drupal 8 Around the Interwebs

Blog posts about Drupal 8 and how much it's going to rock your face.

Drupal 8 in "Real Life"

Also, although DrupalCon Prague is well behind us, if you're feeling nostalgiac or if you weren't there but want to know what the vibe was like, you can watch the Drupalcon Face to Face video posted by John Desalvo.

Whew! That's a wrap!