These are my notes for the Drupal 7 changes session.  They were taken pretty rapidly and I’m confident that I missed largish chunks.  The long and short is, there are a lot of activities that still need to be completed prior to 7 being frozen and released.  You don’t need to be a programmer to help—there are plenty of jobs like documentation and testing—that others in the community can participate in.  So, come to the code and documentation sprints on Saturday!

• Step 1 send release D6
• Step 2 duplicate D6 and rename it Head
• Step 3 Code thaw
• Step 4 Code Freeze
• Step 5 Release
• Step 6 Module get ported to 7

Should I start building sites in Drupal 7?  NO!

Should I start porting modules to Drupal 7?  YES!  but you need to be adventurous.

How do things get done?  Drupal is a do-ocracy.  The work that gets done is by folks like YOU.

How can you help?  You don’t need to be a coder.  There are lots of jobs that don’t require technical skills.

What’s new in D7?

• New minimum requirements – PHP 5.2, MySQL 5.0 or PostgreSQL 8.3
• SQLite support
• PostgreSQL REAL support
• New installer
• New Password Checker
• Time zone support
• Change Article to Story
• Permissions screen now have names and descriptions for example
• Users can now cancel own accounts
• Improved translation Interface
• Forums have icons
• Content Type Screen is more human friendly
• Modules Page has More Help
• Ping and Throttle Module are gonzo
• Themes Page – Admin Theme is here and a new theme called Stark
• Configurable Error Reporting – now you display errors by default with an interface
• Advanced Help is being put into core
• Clearing separation of admin vs user
• Filter system improvements
• Mark Boulton Design to help redesign
• Revamped page.tpl.php – Enable designers to theme without touching php
• Stark – NAKED Drupal theme in core
• drupal_add_js() improvements
• Cross Libary Compatibility
• SimpleTest – will run tests – REALLY REALLY important.
• DB slave replication, schema api, update system, multiple database support, conversions of all core queries to DBTNG
• Field API (CCK in core!)
• Performance improvements are going to be in play
• File API improvements
• Image handling in core
• file management console
• Native file fields
• Improved private file handling hopefully
• There are many new Hooks in D7