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<p class="dropcaps">The Drupal Starshot Initiative, introduced at DrupalCon Portland, is making significant strides in defining its direction and goals. Recently, <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42164/drupal-announces-new-track-leads-starshot-project-advancement">the initiative announced the creation of "tracks"</a> to concentrate development efforts on specific areas. This approach is set to streamline progress and ensure that each aspect of the project receives the attention it needs.</p><p>The Drupal community's response has been robust, with nearly 65 submissions for leadership roles within these tracks. Leaders have been selected, drawing expertise from a diverse set of companies. However, three tracks are still in search of leadership, and the project remains focused on evolving through community-driven collaboration.</p><p>Our founder, Anoop John, <a href="https://youtu.be/aU2Hueh6i-s">conducted an interview</a> with Dries Butyaert at the beginning of July, which we <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/interview/41572/chief-who-drives-and-driven-drupal-talk-with-dries-buytaert">published on July 18</a>. In it, Dries, optimistic about the path the initiative is taking, said:&nbsp;</p><blockquote><p><em>"We have been working hard on the Starshot initiative, dedicating around six hours a day to it. We have made a lot of progress."</em></p></blockquote><p>and we are witnessing that enthusiasm spreading like wildfire in the community. As detailed in Dries Buytaert's <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42132/drupal-starshot-new-strategy-marketers">blog post</a>, the Starshot Initiative—currently a temporary name—targets empowering marketers and expanding Drupal's market presence. Aimed at projects with budgets between $30,000 and $120,000 USD, the initiative focuses on ease of use, flexibility, smart defaults, and strong integrations, making Drupal a gold standard for marketers. Key features include AI-assisted tools, advanced content modeling, and efficient content reuse, all designed to help marketers scale their sites without being hindered by technical limitations.</p><p><span style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;padding:0;text-align:left;">The&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42104/drupal-starshot-initiative-introduces-new-contribution-bonuses" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;padding:0;text-align:left;">Drupal Starshot Initiative has introduced new contribution bonuses</span></a><span style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;padding:0;text-align:left;"> to encourage community involvement further</span>. These bonuses are designed to reward those who lead and contribute to the project, leveraging Drupal's powerful contribution credit system. This includes 10 credits per issue for contributions to specific Starshot modules, 50 credits per week for organizational pledges of dedicated team members, and 1 credit per $100 invested in the innovation fund, starting from a $5,000 minimum.</p><p>Looking ahead, the impact of Drupal 11 and the Starshot Initiative on web development is expected to be profound. Drupal 11 brings innovations such as improved APIs, a revamped admin interface, and enhanced performance, making it more powerful and user-friendly. Starshot builds on this by simplifying installation and configuration, making Drupal accessible even to newcomers.</p><p>As the community continues to work hard on Starshot, anticipation is building for more updates at DrupalCon Barcelona in September. Dries hinted that they hope to showcase real progress, from marketing efforts to the first implementation of "recipes," one of the key technical components of Starshot.</p><p>Now, let's explore what <em>The Drop Times</em> has been reporting on over the past week.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/41622/which-cms-powers-top-us-university-websites-comprehensive-analysis">A comprehensive study by The Drop Times</a> reveals that 35.4% of U.S. universities prefer Drupal for its flexibility and robust community support. The study highlights Drupal's growing role in academic content management.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/interview/42044/resurrected-with-resilience-dallas-ramsdens-drupal-legacy">In a conversation</a> with <em><strong>Elma John</strong></em>, a former sub-editor with <em>The DropTimes</em>, <a href="/people/32359/dreambubbler" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="20d35642-6e8c-4a72-baa3-e3000e862103" data-entity-substitution="canonical">Dallas Ramsden</a>, CEO of Xequals, shares his 16-year journey with Drupal, including surviving a life-threatening accident and transitioning to teaching. His story is one of resilience and dedication to the Drupal community.</p><p><strong>Alka Elizabeth</strong>, sub-editor at The Drop Times, <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42015/closer-look-at-ffws-transition-jakala">reports on JAKALA, a leading data and AI company, acquiring digital experience solutions provider FFW.</a> This deal, the largest non-public digital agency acquisition in Europe for 2023, significantly expands JAKALA's global workforce and market position.</p><p>The Drupal Association has introduced the <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42169/drupals-starshot-edition-bounty-program-seeks-accelerate-contribution-and-reward-innovation">Starshot Edition of its Bounty Program</a>, offering credits to contributors for their involvement in key projects. This initiative aims to accelerate progress within the community.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42098/drupal-ai-module-alpha-6-update-released">The AI Module in Drupal has launched its Alpha 6 update,</a> including most core functionalities. A series of instructional videos has been created to help users navigate these new features.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42102/introducing-dresktop-multi-platform-tool-drupal-project-management">Jose Daniel Estrada introduces Dresktop</a>, a desktop application designed to simplify Drupal project management, inspired by Acquia Desktop and other tools.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42133/drupalorg-outage-resolved-after-brief-downtime">The Drupal.org website experienced a brief outage</a>, but thanks to swift action, the issue was promptly resolved, with insights from <a href="/people/27085/hestenet" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="a83a1737-f31e-4f40-8f7b-2d0c7228bedb" data-entity-substitution="canonical">Tim Lehnen</a>, CTO of the Drupal Association.</p><p>Acquia and other sponsors will <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42031/drupal-govcon-community-party-in-college-park">host a community party for Drupal GovCon attendees on August 13</a>. The event promises an evening of relaxation and networking.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42153/last-chance-submit-sessions-twin-cities-drupal-camp-2024">Session proposals for Twin Cities Drupal Camp 2024 are open until August 15</a>. The camp, taking place at the University of Minnesota, encourages last-minute submissions.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42168/visit-droptimes-stall-at-drupal-govcon-2024">The Drop Times will participate in Drupal GovCon from August 13 to 15</a>, inviting attendees to discuss the latest trends in Drupal and digital governance at our stall.</p><p>With DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 approaching, <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42079/drupalcon-barcelona-2024-register-now-regular-rate">attendees are encouraged to secure their tickets at the regular rate</a> before August 19 for significant savings.</p><p>DrupalCon Singapore 2024 will be held from December 09 to 11, <a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42129/drupalcon-singapore-2024-agenda-released">featuring a wide array of sessions tailored to the Drupal community</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.thedroptimes.com/42097/drupal-tech-talk-37-be-held-in-tilburg-september-5">The 37th Drupal Tech Talk will take place on September 5, 2024</a>, at Spoorlaan 348 in Tilburg at 19:00 CEST. Hosted by <a href="/organization/14123/indicia" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="2b89aed5-bc5a-46b2-ac70-f89061095844" data-entity-substitution="canonical">Indicia</a> and organized by <a href="/organization/19104/finalist" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="c470dfbd-89db-4300-b989-4b3a1d4b26bf" data-entity-substitution="canonical">Finalist</a>, <a href="/organization/19339/react-online" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="2a5e3872-c5a2-4b50-8e22-475659cc6ad2" data-entity-substitution="canonical">React Online</a>, <a href="/organization/20011/swis" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="6546e414-fe75-40bb-acef-8d376b614fc8" data-entity-substitution="canonical">SWIS</a>, and <a href="/organization/19533/synetic" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="c3fa64e1-ea1a-4a90-8e1d-fe355452b3c9" data-entity-substitution="canonical">Synetic</a>, this meetup promises insightful sessions, networking, and community building. Dutch Drupal developers will gather to share experiences, learn from experts, and enjoy food and drinks.</p><p>We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.</p><p>To get timely updates, follow us on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-drop-times/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/thedroptimes">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thedroptimes">Facebook</a>. You can also, join us on Drupal Slack at <a href="https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C04A6AZGYF6">#thedroptimes</a>.</p><p>Thank you,<br>Sincerely<br><strong>KAZIMA ABBAS</strong><br><strong>Sub-editor, </strong><em><strong>The DropTimes</strong></em><strong>.</strong></p>

How to correctly integrate APIs in Python 2024-08-12, by Dariusz Suchojad

Understanding how to effectively integrate various systems and APIs is crucial. Yet, without a dedicated integration platform, the result will be brittle point-to-point, spaghetti integrations, that never lead to good outcomes.

➤ Read this article about Zato, an open-source integration platform in Python, for an overview of what to avoid and how to do it correctly instead.

More blog posts➤

Scaling and Performance Optimization of Drupal Editor Mon, 08/12/2024 - 10:24

The future is not distant anymore, so what kind of "good Drupal performance and scalability" can we expect in 2024? Moreover, what implementations can be done via Drupal's features and options to impress an online audience?
Nowadays, in the era of digital content, a website should be ultramodern in both presentation and performance. Consumers prefer easy experiences. Hence, the ability of an organization to do this for them is a critical factor in service delivery. Regarding the user side of the services, sites should hold up with rapid traffic growth, constantly upgrade, and provide users with a wide range of features.
Moreover, such a growing level of cross-communication may not only meet those expectations but also go far beyond them to help organizations grow in the digital domain. 

Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

Debian LTS contributors

In July, 13 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

• Bastien Roucariès did 20.0h (out of 20.0h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18.0h (out of 18.0h assigned).
• Daniel Leidert did 5.0h (out of 4.0h assigned and 6.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 5.0h to the next month.
• Guilhem Moulin did 8.75h (out of 4.5h assigned and 15.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 11.25h to the next month.
• Lee Garrett did 51.5h (out of 10.5h assigned and 43.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 2.0h to the next month.
• Lucas Kanashiro did 5.0h (out of 5.0h assigned and 15.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 15.0h to the next month.
• Markus Koschany did 40.0h (out of 40.0h assigned).
• Ola Lundqvist did 4.0h (out of 10.0h assigned and 14.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 20.0h to the next month.
• Roberto C. Sánchez did 5.0h (out of 5.25h assigned and 6.75h from previous period), thus carrying over 7.0h to the next month.
• Santiago Ruano Rincón did 6.0h (out of 16.0h assigned), thus carrying over 10.0h to the next month.
• Sean Whitton did 2.25h (out of 6.0h assigned), thus carrying over 3.75h to the next month.
• Sylvain Beucler did 39.5h (out of 2.5h assigned and 51.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 14.0h to the next month.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 11.0h (out of 11.0h assigned).

Evolution of the situation

In July, we have released 1 DLA.

August will be the month that Debian 11 makes the transition to LTS. Our contributors have already been hard at work with preparatorty tasks and also with making contributions to packages in Debian 11 in close collaboration with the Debian security team and package maintainers. As a result, users and sponsors should not observe any especially notable differences as the transition occurs.

While only one DLA was released in July (as a result of the transitional state of Debian 11 “bullseye”), there were some notable highlights. LTS contributor Guilhem Moulin prepared an update of libvirt for Debian 11 (in collaboration with the Old-Stable Release Managers and the Debian Security Team) to fix a number of outstanding CVEs which did not rise to the level of a DSA by the Debian Security Team. The update prepared by Guilhem will be included in Debian 11 as part of the final point release at the end of August, one of the final transition steps by the Release Managers as Debian 11 moves entirely to the LTS Team’s responsibility. Notable work was also undertaken by contributors Lee Garrett (fixes on the ansible test suite and a bullseye update), Lucas Kanashiro (Rust toolchain, utilized by the clamav, firefox-esr, and thunderbird packages), and Sylvain Beucler (fixes on the ruby2.5/2.7 test suites and CI infrastructure), which will help improve the quality of updates produced during the next LTS cycle.

June was the final month of LTS for Debian 10 (as announced on the debian-lts-announce mailing list). No additional Debian 10 security updates will be made available on security.debian.org.

However, Freexian and its team of paid Debian contributors will continue to maintain Debian 10 going forward for customers of the Extended LTS offer. Subscribe right away if you sill have Debian 10 systems which must be kept secure (and which cannot yet be upgraded).

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
  • TOSHIBA (for 106 months)
  • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 74 months)
  • VyOS Inc (for 38 months)
• Gold sponsors:
  • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 116 months)
  • Linode (for 110 months)
  • Babiel GmbH (for 100 months)
  • Plat’Home (for 99 months)
  • CINECA (for 74 months)
  • University of Oxford (for 56 months)
  • Deveryware (for 43 months)
  • EDF SA (for 28 months)
  • Dataport AöR (for 3 months)
• Silver sponsors:
  • Domeneshop AS (for 121 months)
  • Nantes Métropole (for 115 months)
  • Univention GmbH (for 107 months)
  • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 107 months)
  • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 101 months)
  • Exonet B.V. (for 91 months)
  • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 85 months)
  • Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 69 months)
  • Cloudways by DigitalOcean (for 58 months)
  • Dinahosting SL (for 56 months)
  • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 50 months)
  • Platform.sh SAS (for 50 months)
  • Moxa Inc. (for 44 months)
  • sipgate GmbH (for 42 months)
  • OVH US LLC (for 40 months)
  • Tilburg University (for 40 months)
  • GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (for 31 months)
  • Soliton Systems K.K. (for 28 months)
  • THINline s.r.o. (for 4 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
  • Evolix (for 121 months)
  • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 121 months)
  • Intevation GmbH (for 118 months)
  • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 118 months)
  • Daevel SARL (for 117 months)
  • Bitfolk LTD (for 116 months)
  • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 116 months)
  • Greenbone AG (for 115 months)
  • NUMLOG (for 115 months)
  • WinGo AG (for 114 months)
  • Entr’ouvert (for 105 months)
  • Adfinis AG (for 103 months)
  • Tesorion (for 98 months)
  • GNI MEDIA (for 97 months)
  • Laboratoire LEGI - UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 97 months)
  • Bearstech (for 89 months)
  • LiHAS (for 89 months)
  • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 84 months)
  • Supagro (for 79 months)
  • Demarcq SAS (for 78 months)
  • Université Grenoble Alpes (for 64 months)
  • TouchWeb SAS (for 56 months)
  • SPiN AG (for 53 months)
  • CoreFiling (for 49 months)
  • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 44 months)
  • Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble (for 40 months)
  • Tem Innovations GmbH (for 35 months)
  • WordFinder.pro (for 34 months)
  • CNRS DT INSU Résif (for 33 months)
  • Alter Way (for 26 months)
  • Institut Camille Jordan (for 16 months)
  • SOBIS Software GmbH

Debian Contributions: 2024-07

Contributing to Debian is part of Freexian’s mission. This article covers the latest achievements of Freexian and their collaborators. All of this is made possible by organizations subscribing to our Long Term Support contracts and consulting services.

autopkgtest/Incus build streamlining, by Colin Watson

Colin contributed a change to allow maintaining Incus container and VM images in parallel. Both of these are useful (containers are faster, but some tests need full machine isolation), and the build tools previously didn’t handle that very well.

This isn’t yet in unstable, but once it is, keeping both flavours of unstable images up to date will be a simple matter of running this regularly:

RELEASE=sid autopkgtest-build-incus images:debian/trixie RELEASE=sid autopkgtest-build-incus --vm images:debian/trixie Linux live-patching, by Santiago Ruano Rincón

In collaboration with Emmanuel Arias, Santiago continued the work on the support for applying security fixes to the Linux kernel in Debian, without the need to reboot the machine. As mentioned in the previous month report, kpatch 0.9.9-1 (and 0.9.9-2 afterwards) was uploaded to unstable in July, closing the Intent to Salvage (ITS) bug. With this upload, the remaining RC bugs were solved, and kpatch was able to transition to Debian testing recently. Kpatch is expected to be an important component in the live-patching support, since it makes it easy to build a patch as a kernel module. Emmanuel and Santiago continued to work on the design for Linux live-patching and presented the current status in the DebConf24 presentation.

Salsa CI, by Santiago Ruano Rincón

To be able to add RISC-V support and to avoid using tools not packaged in Debian (See #331), the Salsa CI pipeline first needed to move away from kaniko to build the images used by the pipeline. Santiago created a merge request to use buildah instead, and it was merged last month. Santiago also prepared a couple of more MRs related to how the images are built: initial RISC-V support, that should be merged after improving how built images are tested. The switch to buildah introduced a regression in the work-in-progress MR that adds new build image so the build job can run sbuild. Santiago hopes to address this regression and continue with the sbuild-related MRs in August.

Additionally, Santiago also contributed to the install docker-cli instead of docker.io in the piuparts image MR, and reviewed others such as reprotest: Add –append-build-command option, fix failure at manual pipeline run when leaving RELEASE variable empty and Fix image not found error on image building stage.

Python 3.13 Betas, by Stefano Rivera

As Python 3.13 is approaching the first release, Stefano has been uploading the beta releases to Debian unstable. Most of these have uncovered small bugs that needed to be investigated and fixed.

Stefano also took the time to review the current patch set against cPython in Debian.

Python 3.13 isn’t marked as a supported Python release in Debian’s Python tooling, yet, so nothing has been built against it, yet. Now that the Python 3.12 transition has completed, the next task will be to start trying to build Debian’s Python module packages against Python 3.13, to estimate the work required to transition to 3.13 in unstable.

Miscellaneous contributions

• Carles Pina updated the packages python-asyncclick, python-pyaarlo and prepared updates for python-ring-doorbell and simplemonitor.
• Carles Pina updated (reviewing or translating) Catalan translations for adduser, apt-listchanges, debconf and shadow.
• Colin merged OpenSSH 9.8, and prepared a corresponding release note for DSA support now being disabled. This version included some substantial changes to split the server into a listener binary and a per-session binary, and those required some corresponding changes in the GSS-API key exchange patch. Sorting out the details of this and getting it to work again took some time.
• Colin upgraded 11 Python packages to new upstream versions, and modernized the build process and/or added non-superficial autopkgtests to several more.
• Raphaël Hertzog tweaked tracker.debian.org’s debci task to work around changes in the JSON output. He also improved tracker.debian.org’s ability to detect bounces due to spam to avoid unsubscribing emails that are not broken, but that are better than Debian at rejecting spam.
• Helmut Grohne monitored the /usr-move transition with few incidents. A notable one is that some systems have ended up with aliasing links that don’t match the ones installed by base-files which could lead to an unpack error from dpkg. This is now prevented by having base-files.preinst error out.
• Helmut investigated toolchain bootstrap failures with gcc-14 in rebootstrap but would only discover the cause in August.
• Helmut sent a MR for the cross-exe-wrapper requested by Simon McVittie for gobject-introspection. It is a way of conditionally requesting qemu-user when emulation is required for execution during cross compilation.
• Helmut sent three patches for cross build failures.
• Thorsten Alteholz uploaded packages lprint and magicfilter to fix RC-bugs that appeared due to the introduction of gcc-14.
• Santiago continued to work on activities related to the DebConf24 Content Team, including reviewing the schedule and handling updates on it.
• Santiago worked on preparations for the DebConf25, to be held in Brest, France, next year. A video of the BoF presented during DebConf24 can be found here.
• Stefano worked on preparations for DebConf24, and helped to run the event.