Profile Installer

Contents

• Overview
• Proof of concept
• Usage
• Installation & glue code
• Examples

Overview

Profile Installer makes Drupal install profiles (distros) extendable like Drupal modules and themes.

Proof of concept

This is a proof-of-concept it works. But it's under active development. Developers will make every effort to keep the master branch and tagged 0.x.x releases in a working state until the first release. But we make no promises. Tests (e.g. for included example profiles) and pull requests are welcome.

Here's the checklist of features currently envisioned for a feature-complete 7.x-1.0.0 release:

Supports:

• profiles[] in info file
• remove_dependencies[] in info file
• hook_install
• hook_install_tasks
• hook_install_tasks_alter
• hook_form_install_configure_form_alter
• hook_update_N
• auto-generate .install and .profile files for info-file-only profiles. Use Features module's trick to declare necessary hooks like this: original, or updated approach

Utilities:

• drush profile-installer-list-dependencies, list all the dependencies for a profile
• drush profile-installer-check-dependencies, check what's enabled/disabled compared to profile's dependencies, report what's amiss
• drush profile-installer-enforce-dependencies, disable/enable modules to enforce consistent profile state with dependencies declared in code

Tests:

• TBD

Usage

To make a "subprofile" of a "base profile" the way a subtheme extends a base theme, add something like this your profile's info file:

    profiles[] = example_baseprofile

To make an install profile extend or depend on several other profiles the way a module can depend on several other modules, add something like this to your profile's info file:

    profiles[] = profile1
    profiles[] = profile2
    profiles[] = profile3

You can also override dependencies provided by an included profile. For example, maybe your profile is a simple subprofile of some contrib distro. You just want to override some included feature modules to customize the included views and panels. Now your customized versions of these feature modules conflict with the profile you're including. Just disable the included profile's feature modules like this:

    remove_dependencies[] = feature_i_customized1
    remove_dependencies[] = feature_i_customized2
    remove_dependencies[] = feature_i_customized3

Installation & Glue code

Profile Installer requires a little glue code. It relies on you to invoke a few standard install profile hooks, then inside those hooks you can hand off control to the installer. (Hopefully, when a 1.0.0 version of this project is released, there will be a Drush command that generates this for you, per notes under Proof of concept.)

Place Profile Installer in your code base as if it was an install profile here:

    docroot/profiles/profile_installer

If your included profiles are really basic, this is the only thing you need to add to your install file. This will take care of detecting and enabling all dependencies (and removed dependencies):

  require_once DRUPAL_ROOT . '/profiles/profile_installer/profile_installer.inc';

  /**
   * Implements hook_install_tasks_alter().
   */
  function standard3_install_tasks_alter(&$tasks, $install_state) {
    $installer = ProfileInstaller::getInstallerForProfile('standard3');
    $tasks = $installer->alterInstallTasks($tasks, $install_state);
  }

For profiles with additional customizations to install tasks or the install configure form, add this to your install file:

  /**
   * Implements hook_install_tasks().
   */
  function example_install_tasks(&$install_state) {
    $installer = ProfileInstaller::getInstallerForProfile('standard3');
    $tasks = $installer->getInstallTasks($install_state);
    $install_state = $installer->getInstallState();
    return $tasks;
  }

And add this to your profile file:

  require_once DRUPAL_ROOT . '/profiles/profile_installer/profile_installer.inc';

  /**
   * Implements hook_form_FORM_ID_alter() for install_configure_form().
   *
   * Allows the profile to alter the site configuration form.
   */
  function standard3_form_install_configure_form_alter(&$form, $form_state) {
    $installer = ProfileInstaller::getInstallerForProfile('standard3');
    $form = $installer->alterInstallConfigureForm($form, $form_state);
  }

Examples

Documentation on included working examples can be found here.