In the coming weeks, we are going to see some big changes in how (and where) credits are given when working on issues. The new system can do everything that the current system can, but it will enable us to progress further in the GitLab issue migration.
User and organisation profiles won’t change, and they will still have the same credit listings, only reading them from the new system. Likewise, marketplace ranking won’t change either.
Opening the door for GitLab issues
The next significant milestone for us (Drupal Association and the Drupal community) is to migrate Drupal.org issues to GitLab issues, as this will provide everyone with the advantages of using a proven and dedicated system for managing project issues. This is part of the GitLab acceleration initiative that we started years ago.
However, an important part of working with Drupal is the credit recognition, for both individuals and organisations. Note that GitLab issues, while having numerous advantages when dealing with issues, queues, labels… lack the ability to attribute credit to individuals and organisations out of the box. You could attribute commits, but remember that many contributions do not require any code (and therefore commits), so we cannot rely on that.
Due to this, we will “decouple” the Contribution Records system from the issue management. We will connect them, but they will be two separate systems. This also opens the door to different ways of recording contributions for the future, such as providing credit for translations for Drupal from localize.drupal.org, for example.
The new Contribution Records system
The new system is built on the modern new.drupal.org site, and this will be the first part of the new site that the community will interact with.
It will look like the screenshot below, with a full page dedicated to the Contribution Record. We can see how the source issue is linked to it. All the fields will be pre-populated, including the contributors and their participation in the issue, so you won’t need to re-enter them again. There will be a link on every drupal.org issue that will take you directly to the Contribution Record page.
Maintainers will then, with the information given, choose whether or not to grant credit to each contributor. This is the case already with the current system.
As maintainer, you wiill still have a section to copy/paste the commit message, using the new commit message format.
And as a contributor, you will still be able to attribute your work as you do now.
Endpoints to query this information
Our initial integration makes the www.drupal.org read the credit information from new.drupal.org via API calls. These are:
- https://new.drupal.org/contribution-records-by-user
- https://new.drupal.org/contribution-records-by-organization
- https://new.drupal.org/contribution-records-by-organization-by-user
You should add filters to those endpoints, to limit the data to be retrieved. The options are documented in the README file of the underlying module.
What’s next?
The first step is to adopt the usage of the new system, to check that all the data and marketplace calculations are unaffected, and to fix any possible issues that the new system could have.
We will have Drupal.org issues connected to the new Contribution Records, so we will all need to get used to going “to the new place” to record credit information. Remember that when we use GitLab issues, the workflow will be exactly the same.
This leads to what many of us have been waiting for a long time: the move to GitLab issues! We will open an opt-in period for projects to move their issues to GitLab and help us iron out the integration. After that opt-in period, we will progressively move issues for the rest of the projects. There will be a time when some projects will manage their issues via Drupal.org and some others via GitLab, but one thing will remain the same: the new Contribution Records system.
If you want to report bugs or give feedback you can do it via the issue queue for the Contribution Records module.