Home › Drupal Collection › Developing a Module on a Windows System

D. I've Made Some Updates

Wed, 10/31/2007 - 00:05 — admin

Okay, you've made some updates, now it's time to update Drupal. This is the same technique you'll use to create your first "official" release (all your work so far has been in the "-dev" release that you created in the beginning).

But first, are you following my recommendations? Have you run the Coder review and fixed all the flags? Have you created a new translation template? Good for you!

An Interim (-dev) Update

Time to commit the files, if they haven't been already. Right-click on the module folder again and select CVS Commit. All of the files in your module folder will be selected automatically; make sure it also knows about files in subfolders (sometimes it forgets). These files will update the current "-dev" release. In the Comment field, add something like "Fixes for bug #123456" and press OK.

Note that it may take several hours before an updated "-dev" release is available - this is normal.

Hint: Don't close your issues yourself; mark them "fixed." After a week or so of inactivity, the DO system will close it for you. When you see that happen, it is a reasonably good assumption you didn't cause any new problems and you can proceed with creating an official release.

Creating an Official Release

  1. Commit the files as above if they haven't been already.
  2. Next you will have to create a CVS tag for the new version of the module you are releasing; the branch remains the same until a new version of Drupal. This helps to keep track of different releases. The initial stable release started with 1.0, so the next release will probably be 1.1 (but 2.0 works the same way). Use one of the following tags below depending on the version of Drupal:
    3. DRUPAL-6--1-1
    DRUPAL-5--1-1
    DRUPAL-4-7--1-1<
    When this is complete, the module has been registered on Drupal CVS and the new tag has been designated.
  3. Now to add the release that was uploaded to CVS earlier. Go to your project page on DO. Click Add new release for your project. Select the appropriate CVS identifier (it's usually preselected). The next screen is fairly self-explanatory. Click Submit.

    4. An official release will generally be available within five minutes of being committed.

Release Notes

You've seen that little link next to the release identifier; well you get to maintain that now. Click on that link, or the "Edit" next to it, and, strangely enough, you will see an "Edit" tab. You know what to do.