Automate Install Profile Creation With Package Builder Module

Submitted by Bevan Rudge on January 17, 2008 - 2:17pm

Many people predicted that 2008 would see a surge in the availability use of install profiles in drupal. Going by the description of Package Builder project it looks like this is the first big step of the year in this direction.

Package builder is designed to automate the process of creating customized Drupal packages with a custom installation profile. Once enabled, with permission set, users can access the package builder form. In the form, users can specify a project's short name on drupal.org to add to the project to the package. With all projects added, users can specify which modules to enable. From there, users can add the project name, description, and custom PHP code to run after installation has taken place. After clicking "Build package" the package builder does the rest. Once completed, the package builder will have dumped a tarball into its file directory where a user can download the file.

How much easier could creating an install profile get?

Go Shawn Conn and Ubercart!

Does it do install profiles?
Submitted by bmann on January 18, 2008 - 3:50am.

From the description, it sounds like it does what the project module scripts on Drupal.org do, which is create downloadable tar balls. not quite the same thing as an install profile (unless they ALSO create a .profile file automatically?).

I'll have to contact Shawn directly, but it would be great if we could consolidate these efforts -- there are already several of these automated things, include the profile wizard that is part of the Install Profile API.

SVN (or other revision control system) and building proper releases from a checkout is the correct way to do this in a maintainable way.