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2024 Trends: What's New for Drupal Editor Wed, 06/12/2024 - 16:00

People always want to predict the future. They say that is not good, but this doesn't apply to the Drupal 2024 trends. Undoubtedly, Generative Artificial Intelligence will shape tech trends and stimulate further progress in the website development industry.
However, there are other matters worth paying attention to. Mintz, World Wildlife Fund, Chupa Chups, Mattel, and other prominent Drupal websites won’t sit idly by viewing this chaos of innovations and advancements.
Now is the time for unique insights with Golems web development agency about what Drupal 2024 will be like. The more aware you are of prospective game-changing rules, the more up in arms you will act in SEO, marketing, and business growth strategies. Stay tuned to take a sneak peek into the future!

Taking a dive into the deep, dark quagmire of life

Some people have career aspirations from a young age, but for the rest of us, discovering a career-worthy passion, or even learning how to distinguish a job from a career, can take some time. I was nearly ten years into a job in finance (managing insurance/retirement/wealth-building products) when I finally admitted to myself that I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt like I should have a career, not just a job. I wanted to feel proud of the way I spent my days.

Diving in

After some soul-searching, I signed up for a Full-Stack Web Development bootcamp. I was never the kid who tinkered with code or tried to see how my AOL Instant Messenger worked (yes, I was a kid of the 90s) - but I suddenly found myself fascinated with the combination of language, math, and puzzle that was hiding in my browser’s Inspect tool. The bootcamp’s cost made this a risky prospect, but it also made me more likely to commit fully. I can’t say I loved every moment of the grind; working full-time, raising three kids (whom I had adopted just two days into the bootcamp), attending evening classes, keeping up with homework, and maintaining sanity was not always the easiest, but I tend to thrive in chaos. I learned the MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node), and after six months I left the bootcamp with one of the highest scores in my class and even higher hopes.

Cue the mass tech layoffs of late 2022, pitting my emerging knowledge against developers with years of experience at tech giants such as the site formerly known as Twitter. My understanding of code was evident, but my ability to explain code was underdeveloped, leaving me flailing in interviews and unable to find anyone willing to take a chance on me. Anyone, that is, until my local Women Who Code chapter posted about Palantir.net’s fellowship program. I applied, spent three months learning Drupal through DrupalEasy's Drupal Career Online program, and started an internship with Palantir.net. That internship turned into a full-time engineering role, and now I’m creating innovative tech and building professional websites from scratch.

Going deep

How could I transition from finance to React/JavaScript to Drupal/PHP in such a short time? Same way I managed to learn French — its proximity to English based on its Latin roots gave me a leg up. Both JavaScript and PHP are Object-Oriented languages, meaning they derive from making real-world objects into code. Object-Oriented Programming, or OOP, is a paradigm that encompasses several coding languages, and since I already had a base in OOP via JavaScript, I mainly needed to learn the syntax of PHP as the concepts were mostly the same. Not only are the languages similar, but the overall folder structure and architecture of both Drupal and React can be set up using the same patterns. I quickly noticed my new Palantiri teammates using the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, which I was already comfortable with.

Another benefit of that MVC architecture is its collaborative nature. By separating sections of the code based on functionality, different people could work simultaneously on building one piece of a site without risking overwriting one another. React most prominently offers collaboration through its separation of interests via Components, delivering an end product to users, while Drupal is set up to not only be collaboratively built, but to allow site builders to delegate content creation, and even site administration, to users.

Surfacing from murky depths

Perhaps the coolest thing I discovered through this journey is the ability to create a site harnessing the powers of both Drupal and React! Drupal’s Content Management System structure creates a powerful backend for React’s simple and extensive front-end library. This just leaves me with the accessibility question - how can we make Drupal a more popular and attainable technology for entry-level developers? According to Statista’s data analytic survey, Drupal ranks 29th among the most-used frameworks among developers worldwide as of 2023. In the same survey, React ranked second only to Node, which is another JavaScript framework.

I think we can find a path for learners of all types, we just need to harness the power of our community to get there. We are not in competition with React or Wordpress or any other framework, Drupal is just another tool that people should have an opportunity to explore at any level. Who knows? Maybe they’ll fall in love like so many others have.

Calm waters

I love the glimmer of awe in people’s eyes now when I tell them I’m a software engineer. I can’t say the path was easy, but I’ve never regretted making the career change, and I never tire of continuing to suck up every ounce of knowledge I can find. I love the curiosity and creativity that I can bring to work with me every day, bouncing from front-end to back-end work, developing brand new technologies, and exploring every little thing that interests me. I’m happy to say I have found my career. 

Culture Drupal People

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of the basic characteristics and operations of Python mappings. By working through this quiz, you’ll revisit the key concepts and techniques of creating a custom mapping.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

Discover why 1xINTERNET swiftly supported the Drupal Starshot Initiative. In this interview by Kazima Abbas, Baddy Sonja Breidert, CEO and Co-Founder, shares the motivations, goals, and impact behind their involvement. Don't miss these valuable insights from a key player in the Drupal community!

A while back, I wrote about using the SSH agent protocol to satisfy WebAuthn requests. The main problem with this approach is that it required starting the SSH agent with a special argument and also involved being a little too friendly with the implementation - things worked because I could provide an arbitrary public key and the implementation never validated that, but it would be legitimate for it to start doing so and then break everything. And it also only worked for keys stored on tokens that ssh supports - there was no way to extend this to other keystores on the client (such as the Secure Enclave on Macs, or TPM-backed keys on PCs). I wanted a better solution.

It turns out that it was far easier than I expected. The ssh agent protocol is documented here, and the interesting part is the extension support extension mechanism. Basically, you can declare an extension and then just tunnel whatever you want over it. As before, my goto was the go ssh agent package which conveniently implements both the client and server side of this. Implementing the local agent is trivial - look up SSH_AUTH_SOCK, connect to it, create a new agent client that can communicate with that by calling NewClient, and then implement the ExtendedAgent interface, create a new socket, and call ServeAgent against that. Most of the ExtendedAgent functions should simply call through to the original agent, with the exception of Extension(). Just add a case statement against extensionType, define some reasonably namespaced extension, and you're done.

Now you need to use this agent. You probably don't want to use this for arbitrary hosts (agent forwarding should only be enabled for remote systems you trust, not arbitrary machines you connect to - if you enabled agent forwarding for github and github got compromised, github would be able to use any private keys loaded into your agent, and you probably don't want that). So the right approach is to add a Host entry to the ssh config with a ForwardAgent stanza pointing at the socket you created in your new agent. This way the configured subset of remote hosts will automatically talk to this new custom agent, while forwarding for anything else will still be at the user's discretion.

For the remote end things are even easier. Look up SSH_AUTH_SOCK and call NewClient as before, and then simply call client.Extension(). Whatever you stick in the contents argument will simply end up being received at the client end. You now have a communication channel between a the remote system and the local client, and what you do with that is up to you. I'm using it to allow a remote system to obtain auth tokens from Okta and forward WebAuthn challenges that can either be satisfied via a local WebAuthn token or by passing the query off to Mac TouchID, but there's fundamentally no constraints whatsoever on what can be done here.

(If you want to do this on Windows and still have everything work with existing clients you'll need to take this into account - Windows didn't really do Unix sockets until recently so everything there is awful)

comments

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

Debian LTS contributors

In May, 17 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

• Adrian Bunk did 34.25h (out of 24.0h assigned and 22.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 11.75h to the next month.
• Bastien Roucariès did 20.0h (out of 20.0h assigned).
• Ben Hutchings did 16.0h (out of 24.0h assigned), thus carrying over 8.0h to the next month.
• Chris Lamb did 18.0h (out of 18.0h assigned).
• Daniel Leidert did 8.0h (out of 10.0h assigned), thus carrying over 2.0h to the next month.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 35.5h (out of 46.0h assigned), thus carrying over 10.5h to the next month.
• Guilhem Moulin did 13.0h (out of 14.75h assigned and 5.25h from previous period), thus carrying over 7.0h to the next month.
• Lee Garrett did 11.0h (out of 37.25h assigned and 8.75h from previous period), thus carrying over 35.0h to the next month.
• Lucas Kanashiro did 10.0h (out of 20.0h assigned), thus carrying over 10.0h to the next month.
• Markus Koschany did 40.0h (out of 40.0h assigned).
• Ola Lundqvist did 6.5h (out of 22.5h assigned and 1.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 17.5h to the next month.
• Roberto C. Sánchez did 7.75h (out of 11.0h assigned and 1.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 4.25h to the next month.
• Santiago Ruano Rincón did 8.0h (out of 16.0h assigned), thus carrying over 8.0h to the next month.
• Sean Whitton did 5.5h (out of 5.5h assigned and 0.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 0.5h to the next month.
• Sylvain Beucler did 10.5h (out of 0.75h assigned and 45.25h from previous period), thus carrying over 35.5h to the next month.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 14.0h (out of 14.0h assigned).
• Tobias Frost did 7.75h (out of 10.0h assigned and 2.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 4.25h to the next month.

Evolution of the situation

In May, we have released 20 DLAs.

Notable security updates in May included:

• apache2: multiple vulnerabilities which may result in HTTP response splitting, denial of service, or authorization bypass (by Bastien Roucariès, in collaboration with apache2 maintainer Yadd)
• bind9: two vulnerabilities, called KeyTrap and NSEC3, which may result in denial of service (by Santiago Ruano Rincón)
• python-pymysql: potential SQL injection attack (by Chris Lamb)

The aforementioned apache2 was prepared by its Debian maintainer Yadd. This update also involved work on the package test suite in buster, which contributor Bastien Roucariès then forwarded to the apache2 package in unstable. More importantly, a regression in fossil was reported, and Bastien prepared a fix for it. Bastien coordinated the upload of both packages to minimize the introduction of regressions.

Contributor Daniel Leidert also prepared an upload of runc to Debian 11 in order fix a number of CVEs still affecting that package. Finally, contributor Thorsten Alteholz prepared uploads for qtbase-opensource-src, libjwt, and libmicrohttpd in Debian 11. Note that Debian 11 will pass into the LTS phase of support in August and these updates will improve the state and long-term supportability of Debian 11.

Debian 10 is presently in its final month of LTS support (as announced on the debian-lts-announce mailing list, support will end on June 30th), after which no new 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 the customers of the Extended LTS offer. Subscribe right away if you sill have Debian 10 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 105 months)
  • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 73 months)
  • VyOS Inc (for 37 months)
• Gold sponsors:
  • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 116 months)
  • Linode (for 110 months)
  • Babiel GmbH (for 99 months)
  • Plat’Home (for 99 months)
  • CINECA (for 73 months)
  • University of Oxford (for 55 months)
  • Deveryware (for 42 months)
  • EDF SA (for 26 months)
  • CERN
• Silver sponsors:
  • Domeneshop AS (for 120 months)
  • Nantes Métropole (for 115 months)
  • Univention GmbH (for 106 months)
  • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 106 months)
  • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 100 months)
  • Exonet B.V. (for 90 months)
  • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 84 months)
  • Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 67 months)
  • Cloudways by DigitalOcean (for 57 months)
  • Dinahosting SL (for 55 months)
  • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 49 months)
  • Platform.sh SAS (for 49 months)
  • Moxa Inc. (for 43 months)
  • sipgate GmbH (for 40 months)
  • OVH US LLC (for 38 months)
  • Tilburg University (for 38 months)
  • GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (for 30 months)
  • Soliton Systems K.K. (for 27 months)
  • THINline s.r.o.
• 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 116 months)
  • Bitfolk LTD (for 115 months)
  • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 115 months)
  • NUMLOG (for 115 months)
  • Greenbone AG (for 114 months)
  • WinGo AG (for 114 months)
  • Ecole Centrale de Nantes - LHEEA (for 110 months)
  • Entr’ouvert (for 105 months)
  • Adfinis AG (for 102 months)
  • GNI MEDIA (for 97 months)
  • Laboratoire LEGI - UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 97 months)
  • Tesorion (for 97 months)
  • Bearstech (for 88 months)
  • LiHAS (for 88 months)
  • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 83 months)
  • Supagro (for 78 months)
  • Demarcq SAS (for 77 months)
  • Université Grenoble Alpes (for 63 months)
  • TouchWeb SAS (for 55 months)
  • SPiN AG (for 52 months)
  • CoreFiling (for 47 months)
  • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 42 months)
  • Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble (for 39 months)
  • Tem Innovations GmbH (for 34 months)
  • WordFinder.pro (for 33 months)
  • CNRS DT INSU Résif (for 32 months)
  • Alter Way (for 25 months)
  • Institut Camille Jordan (for 14 months)

This is to inform you about the new stable release of Nuitka. It is the extremely compatible Python compiler, “download now”.

This release bumps the long-awaited 3.12 support to a complete level. Now, Nuitka behaves identically to CPython 3.12 for the most part.

In terms of bug fixes, it’s also huge. Especially for Unicode paths and software with Unicode extension module names and Unicode program names, and even non-UTF8 code names, there have been massive amounts of improvements.

Table of Contents

• Bug Fixes

• New Features

• Optimization

• Organizational

• Tests

• Cleanups

• Summary

Bug Fixes

• Standalone: Added support for python-magic-bin package. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• Fix: The cache directory creation could fail when multiple compilations started simultaneously. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• macOS: For arm64 builds, DLLs can also have an architecture dependent suffix; check that as well. Makes the soundfile dependency scan work. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• Fix: Modules where lazy loaders handling adds hard imports when a module is first processed did not affect the current module, potentially causing it not to resolve hidden imports. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• macOS: The use of libomp in numba needs to cause the extension module not to be included and not to look elsewhere. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• Python3.6+: Fix, added support for keyword arguments of ModuleNotFoundError. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• macOS: Detect more versioned DLLs and arm64 specific filenames. Fixed in 2.2.1 already.

• Fix, was not annotating exception exit when converting an import to a hard submodule import. Fixed in 2.2.2 already.

• Fix, branches that became empty can still have traces that need to be merged.

  Otherwise, usages outside the branch will not see propagated assignment statements. As a result, these falsely became unassigned instead. Fixed in 2.2.2 already.

• Windows: Fix, uninstalled self-compiled Python didn’t have proper installation prefix added for DLL scan, resulting in runtime DLLs not picked up from there. Fixed in 2.2.2 already.

• Standalone: Added support for newer PySide6 version 6.7. It needed correction on macOS and has a new data file type. Fixed in 2.2.3 already.

• Standalone: Complete support for pyocd package. Fixed in 2.2.3 already.

• Module: Fix, the created .pyi files were incomplete.

  The list of imported modules created in the finalization step was incomplete, we now go over the actual done modules and mark all non-included modules as dependencies.

• Scons: Fix, need to avoid using Unicode paths towards the linker on Windows. Instead, use a temporary output filename and rename it to the actual filename after Scons has completed.

• Windows: Avoid passing Unicode paths to the dependency walker on Windows, as it cannot handle those. Also, the temporary filenames in the build folder must be in short paths, as it cannot handle them in case that is a Unicode path.

• Scons: For ccache on Windows, the log filename must be a short path too, if the build folder is a Unicode path.

• Windows: Make sure the Scons build executes inside a short path as well, so that a potential Unicode path is visible to the C compiler when resolving the current directory.

• Windows: The encoding of Unicode paths for accelerated mode values of __file__ was not making sure that hex sequences were correctly terminated, so in some cases, it produced ambiguous C literals.

• Windows: Execute binaries created with --windows-uac-admin with and --run options with proper UAC prompt.

• Fix, need to allow for non-UTF8 Unicode in variable names, function names, class names, and method names.

• Python3.10+: Fix, match statements that captured the rest of mapping checks were not working yet.

  match value: case {"key1": 5, **rest}: ... # rest was not assigned here

• Windows: When deleting build folders, make sure the retries leading to a complete deletion always.

• Python2: Fix, could crash with non-unicode program paths on Windows.

• Avoid giving SyntaxWarning from reading source code

  For example, the standard site module of Python 3.12 gives warnings about illegal escape sequences that nobody cares about apparently.

• Fix, the matplotlib warnings by options-nanny were still given even if the no-qt plugin was used, since the variable name referenced there was not actually set yet by that plugin.

• Windows: Fix, when using the uninstalled self-compiled Python, we need python.exe to find DLL dependencies. Otherwise it doesn’t locate the MSVC runtime and Python DLL properly.

• Standalone: Added support for freetype package.

New Features

• Support for Python 3.12 is finally there. We focused on scalability first and because we did things the correct way immediately, rather than rushing to get it working and improving only later.

  As a result, the correctness and performance of Nuitka with previous Python releases are improved as well.

  Some things got delayed, though. We need to do more work to take advantage of other core changes. Concerning exceptions normalized at creation time, the created module code doesn’t yet take advantage. Also, more efficient two-digit long handling is possible with Python 3.12, but not implemented. It will take more time before we have these changes completed.

• Experimental support for Python 3.13 beta 1 is also there, and potentially surprising, but we will try and follow its release cycle closely and aim to support it at the time of release.

  Nuitka has followed all of its core changes so far, and basic tests are passing; the accelerated, module, standalone, and onefile modes all work as expected. The only thing delayed is the uncompiled generator integration, where we need to replicate the exact CPython behavior. We need to have perfect integration only for working with the asyncio loop, so we wait with it until release candidates appear.

• Plugins: Added support to include directories entirely unchanged by adding raw_dir values for data-files section, see Nuitka Package Configuration.

• UI: The new command line option --include-raw-dir was added to allow including directories entirely unchanged.

• Module: Added support for creating modules with Unicode names. Needs a different DLL entry function name and to make use of two-phase initialization for the created extension module.

• Added support for OpenBSD standalone mode.

Optimization

• Python3: Avoid API calls for allocators

  Most effective with Python 3.11 or higher but also many other types like bytes, dict keys, float, and list objects are faster to create with all Python3 versions.

• Python3.5+: Directly use the Python allocator functions for object creation, avoiding the DLL API calls. The coverage is complete with Python3.11 or higher, but many object types like float, dict, list, bytes benefit even before that version.

• Python3: Faster creation of StopIteration objects.

  With Python 3.12, the object is created directly and set as the current exception without normalization checks.

  We also added a new specialized function to create the exception object and populate it directly, avoiding the overhead of calling of the StopIteration type.

• Python3.10+: When accessing freelists, we were not passing for tstate but locally getting the interpreter object, which can be slower by a few percent in some configurations. We now use the free lists more efficient with tuple, list, and dict objects.

• Python3.8+: Call uncompiled functions via vector calls.

  We avoid an API call that ends up being slower than using the same function via the vector call directly.

• Python3.4+: Avoid using _PyObject_LengthHint API calls in list.extend and have our variant that is faster to call.

• Added specialization for os.path.normpath. We might benefit from compile time analysis of it once we want to detect file accesses.

• Avoid using module constants accessor for global constant values

  For example, with (), we used the module-level accessor for no reason, as it is already available as a global value. As a result, constant blobs shrink, and the compiled code becomes slightly smaller , too.

• Anti-Bloat: Avoid using dask from the sparse module. Added in 2.2.2 already.

Organizational

• UI: Major change in console handling.

  Compiled programs on Windows now have a third mode, besides console or not. You can now create GUI applications that attach to an available console and output there.

  The new option --console controls this and allows to enforce console with the force value and disable using it with the disable value, the attach value activates the new behavior.

  Note

  Redirection of outputs to a file in attach mode only works if it is launched correctly, for example, interactively in a shell, but some forms of invocation will not work; prominently, subprocess.call without inheritable outputs will still output to a terminal.

  On macOS, the distinction doesn’t exist anymore; technically it wasn’t valid for a while already; you need to use bundles for non-console applications, though, by default otherwise a console is forced by macOS itself.

• Detect patchelf usage in buggy version 0.18.0 and ask the user to upgrade or downgrade it, as this specific version is known to be broken.

• UI: Make clear that the --nofollow-import-to option accepts patters.

• UI: Added warning for module mode and usage of the options to force outputs as they don’t have any effect.

• UI: Check the success of Scons in creating the expected binary immediately after running it and not only once we reach post-processing.

• UI: Detect empty user package configuration files

• UI: Do not output module ast when a plugin reports an error for the module, for example, a forbidden import.

• Actions: Update from deprecated action versions to the latest versions.

Tests

• Use Nuitka Project Options for the user plugin test rather than passing by environment variables to the test runner.

• Added a new search mode, skip, `` to complement ``resume which resumes right

  after the last test resume stopped on. We can use that while support for a Python version is not complete.

Cleanups

• Solved a TODO about using unified code for setting the StopIteration, coroutines, generators, and asyncgen used to be different.

• Unified how the binary result filename is passed to Scons for modules and executables to use the same result_exe key.

Summary

This release marks a huge step in catching up with compatibility of Python. After being late with 3.12 support, we will now be early with 3.13 support if all goes well.

The many Unicode support related changes also enhanced Nuitka to generate 2 phase loading extension modules, which also will be needed for sub-interpreter support later on.

From here on, we need to re-visit compatibility. A few more obscured 3.10 features are missing, the 3.11 compatibility is not yet complete, and we need to take advantage of the new caching possibilities to enhance performance for example with attribute lookups to where it can be with the core changes there.

For the coming releases until 3.13 is released, we hope to focus on scalability a lot more and get a much needed big improvement there, and complete these other tasks on the side.

Open Source AI needs to require data to be viable

• With many different discussions happening at once, here are the main points:
  • On the issue of training data
    • @mark is concerned with openness of AI not being meaningful if there is not a focus on the training data.” Model weights are the most inscrutable component of current generative AI, and providers that release only [the weights] should not get a free ‘openness’ pass.”
    • @stefano agrees with all of that but questions the criteria used to assign green marks in Mark’s paper, pointing out inconsistencies. They use the example of Pythia-Chat-Base-7, which relies on a dataset from OpenDataHub with potential issues like non-versioned data and stale links, failing to meet stringent requirements required by @juliaferraioli. Similar concerns are raised for other models like OLMo 7B Instruct, which lack specific data versioning details. Maffulli also highlights the case of Pythia-7B, which once may have been compliant but it’s now problematic due to the unavailability of its foundational dataset, the Pile, illustrating the complexities in maintaining an “open source” status over time, if the stringent proposal suggested by @juliaferraioli and the AWS team is adopted.
    • @shujisado adds that while he sympathizes with @juliaferraioli‘s request for datasets, @stefano‘s arguments in support of the concept of “Data information” are aligned with the OSI principles and are reasonable.
    • @spotaws stresses that “data information” alone is insufficient if the data itself is too vague.
    • @juliaferraioli adds that while replicating AI systems like OLMo or Pythia may seem impractical due to costs and statistical nature, the capability is crucial for broader adoption and consistency.  She finds the current definition to be unclear and subjective.
    • @zack recommends to review StarCoder2, recognizing that it would be in the same category of BLOOM: a system with lots of transparency and a dataset made available but released with a restrictive license.
    • @Ezequiel_Lanza joined the conversation in support of the concept of Data information, claiming, with technical arguments that “sharing the dataset is not necessarily required and may not justify the potential risks associated with making it mandatory.”
    • Partially open / restrictive licenses
      • Continuing @marks points regarding restrictive licenses (like the ethical licenses), @stefano has added a link to an article highlighting some reasons why OSI is staying away from these licenses.
      • @pchestek further adds that a partially open license would create even more opportunities for open washing, as “open source AI” could have many meanings.
      • @mark clarified that rather than proposing a variety of meanings, they are seeking to highlight the dimensions of openness in their paper, exploring the broader landscape. 
      • @stefano adds that in the 26 years of OSI, it has contended with numerous organizations claiming varying degrees of openness as “open source. This issue is now mirrored in AI, as companies seek the market value of being labeled Open Source. Open Source is binary: either users have full rights or they don’t, and any system that falls short is not Open Source AI, regardless of how “almost” open it is.
    • Field of use/restriction 
      • @juliaferraioli believes that OSAID should include prohibitions against field-of-use restrictions.
      • @shujisado adds that OSAID specifies four freedoms as requirements for being considered open source and that this should be understood as the same since “freedom” is the same as “non-restricted”. The 10 clauses of the OSD have been replaced by the checklist in draft v0.0.8.
      • @juliaferraioli adds that individual components may be covered by their individual licenses, but the overall system may be subject to additional terms, which is why we need this to be explicit.

Initial Report on Definition Validation

• @Mer has added how far we are regarding our system analysis compared to our current draft definition. Some points that remain incomplete have been highlighted.
• Mistral (Mixtral 8x7B) is considered not in alignment with the OSAID because its data pre-processing code is not released under an OSI-approved license.

Can a derivative of non-open-source AI be considered Open Source AI?

• @tarek_ziade shares his experience fine-tuning a “small” model (200M parameters) for a Firefox feature to describe images, using a base model for image encoding and text decoding. Despite not having 100% traceability of upstream data, Tarek argues that intentional fine-tuning and transparency make the new fine-tuned model open source. Any issues arising from downstream data can be addressed by the project maintainers, maintaining the model’s open source status.

Town hall recording out

• We held our 10th town hall meeting a week and a half ago. You can access the recording here if you missed it.
• A new town hall meeting is scheduled for this Friday, June 14.

After signing up for GitHub Sponsors, I had a nagging feeling that somehow asking for money from other people to support my open source work was inappropriate. But after much reflection, I realized that phrasing the use of GitHub Sponsors as a way to express patronage/support and appreciation for my work instead of sponsorship stopped me feeling bad about it. It also led me to reflect on to what degree people can express thanks to open source maintainers.

⚠️This blog post is entirely from my personal perspective and thus will not necessarily apply to every open source developer out there.Be nice

The absolutely easiest way to show thanks is to simply not be mean. It sounds simple, but plenty of people fail at even this basic level of civility. This isn&apost to say you can&apost say that a project didn&apost work for you or you disagree with something, but there&aposs a massive difference between saying "I tried the project and it didn&apost meet my needs" and "this project is trash".

People failing to support this basic level of civility is what leads to burnout.

Be an advocate

It&aposs rather indirect, but saying nice things about a project is a way of showing thanks. As an example, I have seen various people talk positively about pyproject.toml online, but not directly at me. That still feels nice due to how much effort I put into helping make that file exist and creating the [project] table.

Or put another way, you never know who is reading your public communications.

Produce your own open source

Another indirect way to show thanks is by sharing your own open source code. By maintaining your own code, you&aposll increase the likelihood I myself will become a user of your project. That then becomes a circuitous cycle of open source support between us.

Say thanks

Directly saying "thank you" actually goes a really long way. It takes a lot of positive interactions to counteract a single negative interaction. You might be surprised how much it might brighten someone&aposs day when someone takes the time and effort to reach out and say "thank you", whether that&aposs by DM, email, in-person at a conference, etc.

Fiscal support

As I said in the opening of this post, I set up GitHub Sponsors for myself as a way for people to show fiscal support for my open source work if that&aposs how they prefer to express their thanks (including businesses). Now I&aposm purposefully not saying "sponsor" as to me that implies that giving money leads to some benefit (e.g. getting a shout-out somewhere) which is totally reasonable for people to do. But for me, since every commit is a gift, I&aposm financially secure, and I&aposm not trying to make a living from my volunteer open source work or put in the effort to make sponsorship worth it, I have chosen to treat fiscal support as a way of showing reciprocity for the gift of sharing my code that you&aposve already received. This means I fully support all open source maintainers setting up fiscal support at a minimum, and if they want to put in the effort to go the sponsorship route then they definitely should.

Producing open source also isn&apost financially free. For instance, I pay for:

1. The hosting of this blog via Ghost(Pro)
2. Obsidian Sync to keep my open source notes available on all my devices so when I have an idea I can write it down
3. Obsidian Publish to share my open source notes
4. Computer upgrades (including ergonomic upgrades like keyboards)
5. My personal time away from my wife and child, family and friends (which my open source journal exists to try and point out for those who don&apost realize how much time I put into my volunteer work)

So while open source is "free" for you as the consumer, the producer very likely has concrete financial costs in producing that open source on top of the intangible costs like volunteering their personal time.

But as I listed earlier, there are plenty of other ways to show thanks without having to spend money that can be equally valuable to a maintainer.

I also specifically didn&apost mention contributing. I have said before that contributions are like giving someone a puppy: it seems like a lovely gift at the time, but the recipient is now being "gifted" daily walks involving scooping 💩 and vet bills. As such, contributions from others can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time depending on the contribution itself, the attitude of the person making the contribution, etc. So I wouldn&apost always assume my contribution is as welcomed and desired as much as a "thank you" note.

Authored by Nadiia Nykolaichuk, João Paulo Constantino, Ana Carolina, and Gabriel Passarelli.

Authored by Nadiia Nykolaichuk, João Paulo Constantino, Ana Carolina, and Gabriel Passarelli.

#633 – JUNE 11, 2024
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String Interpolation in Python: Exploring Available Tools

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Notebooks for Fundamentals of Music Processing

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Python’s Many Command-Line Utilities

This article describes every command-line tool included with Python, each of which can be run with python -m module_name.
TREY HUNNER

String Interpolation in Python (Quiz)

Take this quiz to test your understanding of the available tools for string interpolation in Python, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. These tools include f-strings, the .format() method, and the modulo operator.
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Python 3.12.4 Released

See the full list of changes in this release
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PEP 712 Rejected

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Python 3.13.0 Beta 2 Released

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This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #633.
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The Drupal community advanced its Starshot initiative with a key session on June 7, 2024, led by Dries Buytaert and Cristina Chumillas. The session focused on refining the Drupal ecosystem with user-centric improvements and strategic development milestones. Key topics included the mission statement review, concept wireframes, draft milestones for DrupalCon Barcelona, and the Starshot Council.

We’re already on Week 3 of the coding period of Google Summer of Code! As a reminder, I’m adding Python support to a few KDE Frameworks. During the first two weeks I added support for KWidgetsAddons, and it’s now almost finished except for two widgets whose bindings aren’t generated properly and don’t compile.

I also wrote (with the help of my mentor Carl) the necessary CMake code to build the library. That part is probably going to end (hopefully) in extra-cmake-modules so it can be used by anyone easily. The plan is to eventually submit each of the bindings to their repository so it’s easier to keep the C++ libraries in sync with their Python bindings.

This week I will be adding some examples for KWidgetAddons now that it’s on a usable status. If you want to see how it’s going, you can take a look at the code.

When a new major version of Drupal is released, custom code often requires updates to align with API changes, including the removal of deprecated APIs.

Because I keep forgetting certain aspects of this workflow, I decided to document it for future reference.

Tools overview Tool Interface Functionality Target Audience Upgrade Status module UI in Drupal Identifies deprecated code, hosting environment compatibility, and more Site administrators and developers Drupal Check Command-line Identifies deprecated code Developers, especially during coding and continuous integration (CI) Upgrade Status module

The Upgrade Status module assesses a Drupal site's readiness for major version upgrades by checking for deprecated code and other compatibility issues.

Screenshot of a Drupal upgrade status report showing hosting environment compatibility checks.

1. Install the Upgrade Status module like you would install any other Drupal module:

   [code bash]$ ddev composer require –dev drupal/upgrade_status[/code]

   Here, ddev is the tool I prefer for managing my local development environment. composer is a dependency manager for PHP, commonly used to install Drupal modules. The –dev option specifies that the module should be installed as a development requirement, meaning it is necessary for development environments but not installed on production environments.

2. Enable the Upgrade Status module:

   [code bash]$ ddev drush pm-enable upgrade_status[/code]

   drush stands for "Drupal shell" and is a command-line utility for managing Drupal sites. The command pm:enable (where pm stands for "package manager") is used to enable a module in Drupal.

3. After enabling the module, you can access its features by navigating to the Admin > Reports > Upgrade status page at /admin/reports/upgrade-status.

Upgrading PHP and MySQL using DDEV

The Upgrade Status module might recommend updating PHP and MySQL, per Drupal's system requirements.

To update the PHP version of DDEV, use the following command:

[code bash]$ ddev config –-php-version 8.3[/code]

To upgrade the MySQL version of DDEV and migrate your database content, use the following command:

[code bash]$ ddev debug migrate-database mariadb:10.11[/code]

After updating these settings, I restart DDEV and run my PHPUnit tests. Although these tests are integrated into my CI/CD workflow, I also run them locally on my development machine using DDEV for immediate feedback.

Drupal Check

Drupal Check is a command-line tool that scans Drupal projects for deprecated code and compatibility issues.

Output of Drupal Check command indicating no deprecated code was found.

1. Installation:

   [code bash]$ ddev composer require –dev mglaman/drupal-check[/code]

2. Run Drupal Check from the root of your Drupal installation:

   [code bash]$ ./vendor/bin/drupal-check –memory-limit 500M docroot/modules/custom[/code]

   I usually have to increase the memory limit, hence the --memory-limit 500M.

Getting a list of all the files and folders in a directory is a natural first step for many file-related operations in Python. When looking into it, though, you may be surprised to find various ways to go about it.

When you’re faced with many ways of doing something, it can be a good indication that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to your problems. Most likely, every solution will have its own advantages and trade-offs. This is the case when it comes to getting a list of the contents of a directory in Python.

In this video course, you’ll be focusing on the most general-purpose techniques in the pathlib module to list items in a directory, but you’ll also learn a bit about some alternative tools.

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As is customary Apple announced their latest operating system versions at WWDC yesterday, including macOS 15 Sequoia, named after the national park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.9.1 on the Firefox Web Store. This is the Firefox release of version 1.9 that was released way back in November 2023. We’re not sure how it got stuck in Add-on review and that we didn’t realize this but whatever the reason, it’s out now! This is a maintenance release shipping a couple of important changes as well as the usual translation updates. The extension is of course fully supported under Plasma 6!

Konqi surfing the world wide web

Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!

The next release will likely be version 2.0 ported to Manifest v3 since Chrome has continued their roll-out of enforcing the new manifest version soon. We’re still trying to find a way to keep a unified code base supporting both Firefox and Chrome. Chrome for example requires service workers for the extension now while Firefox continues to support only background pages. Recent Firefox and Chrome releases seem to support each other’s manifest properties, though, therefore we’re confident to make this work without introducing browser-specific git branches.

What’s new?

If you’re a Firefox user, check out the previous version announcement for more details on what’s new:

• Reworked page injection code (e.g. fixes Spotify)
• Port away from deprecated InstallTrigger
• “Share…” menu now also on tab context menu
• Tabs runner queries only “normal” windows (no apps)
• History runner skips “blob” URLs
• Check native messaging host before sending to it (fixes annoying console warnings on unsupported platforms, e.g. Windows)
• Prettier console debug output
• Performance and resource usage improvements

(also see the Changelog Page on our Community Wiki)

<strong>Topics covered in this episode:</strong><br> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/Dataherald/dataherald">Dataherald</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.pythonmorsels.com/cli-tools"><strong>Python's many command-line utilities</strong></a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/wolfi-dev">Distroless Python</a></li> <li><a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html"><strong>functools.cache</strong></a>, <a href="https://github.com/tkem/cachetools/"><strong>cachetools</strong></a><strong>, and</strong> <a href="https://github.com/awolverp/cachebox"><strong>cachebox</strong></a></li> <li><strong>Extras</strong></li> <li><strong>Joke</strong></li> </ul><a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETZ3CvfbF_o' style='font-weight: bold;'data-umami-event="Livestream-Past" data-umami-event-episode="387">Watch on YouTube</a><br> <p><strong>About the show</strong></p> <p>Sponsored by ScoutAPM: <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/scout"><strong>pythonbytes.fm/scout</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Connect with the hosts</strong></p> <ul> <li>Michael: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@mkennedy"><strong>@mkennedy@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Brian: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@brianokken"><strong>@brianokken@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Show: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@pythonbytes"><strong>@pythonbytes@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> </ul> <p>Join us on YouTube at <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/stream/live"><strong>pythonbytes.fm/live</strong></a> to be part of the audience. Usually Tuesdays at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.</p> <p>Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/friends-of-the-show">our friends of the show list</a>, we'll never share it.</p> <p><strong>Michael #1:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/Dataherald/dataherald">Dataherald</a></p> <ul> <li>Interact with your SQL database, Natural Language to SQL using LLMs.</li> <li>Allows you to set up an API from your database that can answer questions in plain English</li> <li>Uses include <ul> <li>Allow business users to get insights from the data warehouse without going through a data analyst</li> <li>Enable Q+A from your production DBs inside your SaaS application</li> <li>Create a ChatGPT plug-in from your proprietary data</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #2:</strong> <a href="https://www.pythonmorsels.com/cli-tools"><strong>Python's many command-line utilities</strong></a></p> <ul> <li>Trey Hunner</li> <li>Too many to list, but here’s some fun ones <ul> <li>json.tool - nicely format json data</li> <li>calendar - print the calendar <ul> <li>current by default, but you can pass in year and month</li> </ul></li> <li>gzip, ftplib, tarfile, and other unixy things <ul> <li>handy on Windows</li> </ul></li> <li>cProfile &amp; pstats</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p><strong>Michael #3:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/wolfi-dev">Distroless Python</a></p> <ul> <li>via Patrick Smyth</li> <li>What is <a href="https://www.chainguard.dev/unchained/minimal-container-images-towards-a-more-secure-future">distroless</a> anyway? <ul> <li>These are container images without package managers or shells included.</li> <li>Debugging these images presents some wrinkles (can't just exec into a shell inside the image), but they're a lot more secure.</li> </ul></li> <li>Chainguard, creates low/no CVE distroless images based on our FOSS distroless OS, <a href="https://github.com/wolfi-dev">Wolfi</a>.</li> <li>Some Python use-cases: <pre><code>docker run -it cgr.dev/chainguard/python:latest # The entrypoint is a Python REPL, since no b/a/sh is included docker run -it cgr.dev/chainguard/python:latest-dev # This is their dev version and has pip, bash, apk, etc. </code></pre></li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #4:</strong> <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html"><strong>functools.cache</strong></a>, <a href="https://github.com/tkem/cachetools/"><strong>cachetools</strong></a><strong>, and</strong> <a href="https://github.com/awolverp/cachebox"><strong>cachebox</strong></a></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html"><strong>functools</strong></a> cache and lru_cache - built in </li> <li><a href="https://github.com/tkem/cachetools/"><strong>cachetools</strong></a> - “This module provides various memoizing collections and decorators, including variants of the Python Standard Library's @lru_cache function decorator.”</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/awolverp/cachebox"><strong>cachebox</strong></a> - “The fastest caching Python library written in Rust”</li> </ul> <p><strong>Extras</strong> </p> <p>Brian:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://pythoninsider.blogspot.com/2024/06/python-3124-released.html">Python 3.12.4 is out</a></li> <li><a href="https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/python-in-visual-studio-code-june-2024-release/">VSCode has some pytest improvements</a></li> </ul> <p>Michael:</p> <ul> <li>Time for a <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/06/alternatives-bartender-mac-menu-bar/">bartender alternative</a>, I’ve switched to <a href="https://icemenubar.app">Ice</a>.</li> <li><a href="https://www.rocket.chat">Rocket.chat</a> as an alternative to Slack</li> </ul> <p><strong>Joke:</strong> <a href="https://dev.to/alvaromontoro/css-cartoons-29bp">CSS Cartoons</a></p>

First things first, let's talk about why you're here. You've got a DNN website that's starting to show its age, and you're eyeing that sleek, modern Drupal CMS like it's the latest iPhone. From DotNetNuke to DNN Platform to DNN Evoq-sometimes simply called Evoq-this CMS has seen a series of transformations. Once an extremely popular CMS solution for organizations (mostly enterprise-level), DNN Evoq has faced the inevitable challenge of staying relevant over two decades. It's hard for any software to remain popular for over 20 years, especially with the changing world of web development and content management. Drupal, despite being older than DNN (okay, a year older), is thriving! Over time, it has only evolved into a more modern, user-friendly, and robust CMS. Moreover, Drupal excels at what it was designed to do: effective content management.  However, this is not intended to be a comparison blog of DNN vs. Drupal, even though we'll touch on a few reasons to consider the switch. This article aims to shed light on the DNN to Drupal migration process and what it entails. Additionally, we will share a case study of one of  Specbee's successful DNN to Drupal migrations.  Why you should migrate from DNN Evoq to Drupal To those who need to know some history of DNN, it was created by Shaun Walker and launched in late 2002. Written in C#, DNN is open source and relies on .NET framework and ASP.NET Web Forms. DNN soon became a platform known for its extensibility and seamless scalability which also brought in a lot of consultants and agencies to offer DNN development services.  However, over the years, DNN has experienced significant changes. The shift to the ASP.NET MVC model in 2009, coupled with some acquisitions, led to a decline in its user base and community support. DNN started relying on outdated technologies (since the .NET framework stopped development in 2019) and is unable to adapt to modern technologies and advancements. This evolution made it less appealing for businesses looking for a robust and active platform.  Now, why should you consider moving to Drupal, especially Drupal 10? Active and Vibrant Community: Drupal has one of the largest open-source communities. This means continuous improvements, a wealth of modules and themes, and a support system that's always buzzing. Continuous innovation: Drupal's constant innovation, driven by its passionate community, keeps it ahead with advanced features and enhancements. New strategic initiatives like Drupal Starshot, Project Browser, Experience Builder, Recipes, and Automatic Updates are poised to revolutionize the Drupal experience, making it more intuitive, efficient, and adaptable than ever before.  Cutting-Edge Features: Drupal 10 comes packed with modern features. It leverages Symfony 6 and Twig 3, ensuring your site is not just robust but also future-proof. The new admin theme, Claro, and the front-end theme, Olivero, offer a more intuitive and visually appealing experience. Effective editorial workflow system: With Drupal, end users can easily create and manage workflows tailored to their organization's needs and adjust them on-demand as necessary which is becoming more and more of a demand today.  In comparison, DNN's customization options and support for complex editorial workflows often require extensive coding knowledge.  Scalability and Flexibility: Like DNN, Drupal is known for its scalability. However, Drupal takes it a step further with its flexible content architecture, allowing you to create and manage various content types with ease. Security: Drupal is renowned for its strong security track record. The Drupal Security Team actively monitors and addresses vulnerabilities, giving you peace of mind. SEO and Performance: Drupal 10 includes out-of-the-box features that help improve SEO and site performance. From clean URLs to advanced caching mechanisms, it’s designed to help your site rank better and load faster. Accessibility: Drupal is committed to web accessibility standards, ensuring your site is usable by everyone. Extensive Ecosystem: With thousands of modules and themes, Drupal offers a vast ecosystem to extend your site's functionality without reinventing the wheel. By switching to Drupal 10, you're stepping into a future-ready, secure, and highly customizable environment. It's a move that can significantly improve your digital presence and provide a solid foundation for growth. Preparing for the migration Before you begin your DNN to Drupal migration, we recommend reading this article to get yourself prepped for a migration regardless of the version. It covers what information you should share with your Drupal development partner. This migration is also a perfect time to add those extra features or third-party integrations you've always wanted. Additionally, it's a great opportunity to revamp your website's design and user experience if needed. Consider your website’s current SEO positioning and how you would like to optimize it. Once you've considered everything, create a backup of your website to avoid any accidental changes or data loss. Next, make a checklist of your content structure, including content types, URLs, metadata, and media files. After this, let the Drupal migration experts take over. DNN to Drupal migration process Here’s a 4-step migration process that is (or should ideally be) followed by your Drupal migration partner: 1. Migration Audit Identify your DNN website features, functionality, modules, and content structure Conduct a detailed analysis to understand the digital landscape Catalog content views for easier replication Develop a strategic content migration strategy 2. Build Application Meticulously rebuild content structure and theme Replicate website features, add new features Conduct thorough regression testing Ensure a solid foundation, seamless functionality, and flawless performance 3. Migrate Content Content extraction from your database in a CSV, XML or JSON format Ensure a seamless transition from DNN to the latest Drupal version Import all contents and valuable assets, match them with the freshly created content types and fields Meticulously validate the entire data migration process for data accuracy and completeness. 4. Testing Thoroughly test migrated data for sanity and integrity. Subject replicated features to smoke testing and load testing. Guarantee seamless performance under various scenarios. Conduct meticulous security checks. Watch this video of our step-by-step Drupal migration process, irrespective of the CMS you are coming from. (To be embedded) https://youtu.be/D5JUud_a81k?feature=shared A DNN to Drupal migration case study The client (Stamats) approached us with a two-fold issue. They had three magazine sites on a legacy version of DNN that was riddled with malware and needed major work for the migration to Drupal. Among those sites was MeetingsToday.com.  Meetings Today was several years old, and had more than 20,000 articles in DNN. There was also extensive functionality related to their physical magazine, events, podcasts, webinars, and more. Their primary goal was to retain and grow their audience. They were experiencing issues with editing, and an uncertain future. The challenge came to Specbee to create a Drupal distribution that could serve the core publishing needs of several online magazine sites built in DNN.  So we built a custom Drupal distribution to save them time and money in the long term. This approach allowed any new feature developed for one site to be easily implemented across all sites while preserving their unique designs. It also gave them the ability to spin up a new publishing site without building a brand new website from scratch getting them to market 10x faster.  Specbee delivered a solution that allowed for Drupal's powerful editorial controls and publishing tools for multiple sites while allowing those sites to retain their unique functionality. References https://devessence.com/blog/!/22/what-is-your-dnn-migration-strategy/https://www.dnnsoftware.com/community-blog/cid/134716/asp-net-mvc-and-d…https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunbrucewalker/ Final thoughts We understand that migrations are never an easy decision for any business. While entrusting a reliable technology partner can alleviate some concerns, it's crucial to dedicate your attention and time before handing over the reins. By choosing the right Drupal partner (such as Specbee, a certified Drupal migration partner), you can streamline the migration process, making it as seamless and painless as possible. Still wondering if you should migrate your DNN website to Drupal? Give us a call and we’ll help you make the right decision.