Document Starshot

I hope that this press release answers some of your questions: https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupal-lead-dries-buytaert-announces-the-guiding-star-for-a-new-version-of-the-drupal-cms-23-years →

Based on what I've heard and read about this, the initiative is currently being formed and the project being setup on Drupal.org and Gitlab. It will probably take some weeks until we start to see more official documentation but until then you can follow the discussions on #starshot on Drupal Slack

https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupal-lead-dries-buytaert-annou... → was extremely misleading when first posted (it's better now but still not great IMO) so not a good basis for documentation.

What exactly is Starshot (is it just a typical Drupal distribution?)

It will be Drupal core + a recipe (likely a collection of recipes using the new Recipes API + the necessary contributed modules to enable that recipe.

This will be 'just a typical Drupal distribution' in the sense that once Recipes is stable in core, install profiles as they currently are will be deprecated. The difference is though that unlike install profiles, you can mix and match recipes and aren't tied to one for the lifetime of the site.

What is Starshot’s new governance model?

TBD. It doesn't exist yet. It won't be exclusively core committers though.

What is the initiative road map?

TBD but there are some existing things it will be built on top of which are already well in progress / running separately:

1. Recipes
2. Project browser and automatic updates (so that 'starshot' can be downloaded from a new install of Drupal core, not just as a separate composer package).
3. Layout builder UX/functionality improvements.

Anything else is TBD, it is likely that it will include some very highly used contrib modules like pathauto in the recipe(s) but specifics of this are also TBD.

@baddysonja:
That is exactly the document that is raising these questions.

will probably take some weeks until we start to see more official documentation

That goes to my point above. This is basic “coordinated release” territory where a major initiative with a less than 1 year (~238 days at time of my writing) deadline would already have its documents written and ready to publish the moment the Dries presentation was completed in order to effectively recruit volunteer’s.

until then you can follow the discussions on #starshot on Drupal Slack

That would make good documentation as well of “where the initiative is being discussed” which is not a question I thought to ask.

I will note for others that from a Slack ping I received I have learned this initiative apparently has been mocked on GitHub, it is apparently just a Drupal Distribution built using the Recipes system rather than the Install Profile system (though is trying to be presented as not a distribution).

The GitHub repo is apparently linked from https://www.drupal.org/starshot → via “try now” (found via Google, I have not found where this is linked to on D.O. and did not observe it in the press release)

This is basic “coordinated release” territory where a major initiative with a less than 1 year (~238 days at time of my writing) deadline would already have its documents written and ready to publish the moment the Dries presentation was completed in order to effectively recruit volunteer’s.

You are imagining large teams of people working on this for long periods of time, neither of which exist, hopefully new volunteers can help to write some documentation. It is much easier to do that in public than purely in private, so hopefully it will start soon.

Definitely more info should be available, but it was a big reveal and we did not have that part done yet. In hindsight we should have had plans for an FAQ, etc. But we now know a lot of the common questions we are getting at DrupalCon and can build an FAQ based on that.

Its a double edged sword as well. Some people had the feedback that this felt too baked and too decided (as opposed to the longer timeline projects Dries usually announced before, where he only outlined an idea and it was done over years), while many others said this is too half baked and why don't we know a lot more. @cmlara you are in the later camp, but not everyone is :)

Current information is available at drupal.org/starshot and also https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-may-2024

I have started the 1,000 Drupal Gardens → project to address the issues of hosting and of building a Drupal business as a non-technical user. I believe to sustain the development of Drupal as a consumer product, we need to have lots of people making money from Drupal as a consumer product, not just from using Drupal to build their own products.

Wrote this quick FAQ to begin with and published at https://drupal.org/starshot#faq, suggestions welcome:

Is Starshot a fork of Drupal?

No. Starshot will be based on the strong foundation of Drupal core, relying on Project Browser and Recipes to achieve a great out-of-the-box experience. It will enable people without Drupal experience to easily create a new Drupal site and extend it with pre-packaged recipes, all using their browser.

Is Starshot a rewrite of Drupal?

No. Starshot will be based on the strong foundation of Drupal core, relying on Project Browser and Recipes to achieve a great out-of-the-box experience. It will enable people without Drupal experience to easily create a new Drupal site and extend it with pre-packaged recipes, all using their browser.

Is Starshot a distribution (or install profile) of Drupal?

No. Starshot is based on Recipes (see below), which are a lot more flexible than distributions.

What are Recipes?

Recipes are supported by new APIs in Drupal 10.3 and 11.0. Recipes are automated site builder steps. In technical terms a combination of preconfigured Drupal extensions. Recipes can depend on other recipes, they are composable with other recipes and unlike distributions, do not lock the site in. The eventual goal is that Drupal core itself will offer up recipes instead of install profiles.

Is Starshot the product name?

No. The initiative is called Starshot. There is no intention to launch an entirely new brand. The working name for the eventual product is Drupal CMS, but that may still change.

What happens to Drupal core?

Drupal core is a strong, stable basis for Starshot. For the time being Starshot plans to build on Automated updates/Package manager, Project Browser and Recipes additionally to core. The ideal end state is that Drupal core becomes capable to launch Recipes for starter experiences and then be able to apply further recipes on top. Drupal core is not going away.

The FAQ has been further extended. Starshot is now included on the initiatives page and has its own project page now. We'll update these as we know more. I think we can consider this fixed to the extent we know currently.

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.