Moving the
database settings from one one instance to other, has always been a
menace. Not just in Drupal but web-development in general. Thanks to
features module we today have solved this problem significantly if
not completely.
A
feature is a collection of Drupal entities which taken together
satisfy a certain use-case.
And
what features module does is enables the capture and management of
features in Drupal. A
features module takes different site building components from
modules(with exportables) and bundles them together in a single
feature module. Examples of modules with exportables are views, cck,
contexts and panels. So in simple terms features bundles together the
varoius components from modules like views, cck, contexts and
panels.
To
get more clarity lets take an example. Let us assume that we are
exporting a “Photo Gallery” feature through features module. The
“Photo Gallery” feature will typically consist of two content
types images and gallery, a view for latest galleries, a view for
images in the gallery and a
view for the featured gallery. Three to four image-cache presets. Few
admin settings. So it would be a herculean task to export all these
features individually. With features when you select one items it
autosuggest all the other realte entities that should be exported.
Using contexts simplifies this process further more.
With the advent of
features module, a new trend has started in the Drupal Distro space
and its called Features Driven Development. The idea here is to keep
the naming convention generic enough so that all you need to create a
new Distro is export your features through feature module and create
a simple profile with the modules exported by feature enabled by
default. Thanks to features module every Drupal developer can now
also be a Distro contributor, if he can generalise the requirements.
A whole new set of Distros or built base don this concept.
