Hello,
A recent close reading of the details of the Drupal 7 EOL announcement revealed that part of the EOL process will be to spin down Drupal 7 related resources, including the potential removal of Drupal 7 related messaging and source code files from drupal.org
Considering that Backdrop CMS is a "port" of Drupal 7, I think it would be prudent for Backdrop CMS to take "snapshots" of not only the /core branch of Drupal 7, but also its /contrib branch, which contains thousands of (as-yet) unported solutions.
Forgive my ignorance if Drupal 7 is already being entirely "mirrored" by Backdrop CMS.
- If this is already being done, where is it?
- If it is not being done, why not?
The equity of "zillions" of man-hours is at stake.
Without its own "mirror", the situation with Backdrop CMS could easily take a nasty turn:
-
Like with WordPress
- Prejudicial blocking of access to code
-
Like with the Wayback Machine
- Intermittently offline due to hacking activities
-
Like with 23andMe
- DNA information falling into unknown hands resulting from bankruptcy
None of the above situations are reassuring. So, how is the Backdrop CMS project guaranteeing to itself eternal access to Drupal 7 source code?
RESEARCH
I did a little research regarding the magnitude of the problem:
METHOD
-
I downloaded a list of all files available form drupal.org, which included their size in bytes.
- You can get this list by visiting https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/
- I copy/paste the entire contents into notepad
- I copy/past the notepad into MS-EXEL, which helped separate the columns
- I used MS-EXCEL to generate preliminary SQL statements
- I used GVIM to finalize the SQL statements (removing \t mostly)
- I uploaded the list to my Linux machine
- I created SQL scripts to create a local MariaDB database and table
- I uploaded the prepared SQL statements into the database
- I performed various SQL queries on the database
FINDINGS
Count:
I used SQL to discover the number of all Drupal 7.x files:
> select count(file_name) from drupalfiles where file_name LIKE "%7.x%";
+------------------+
| count(file_name) |
+------------------+
| 164867 |
+------------------+
1 row in set (0.338 sec)
According to my research, there are 164,867 individual Drupal 7.x files
Size:
I used SQL to discover the footprint of all Drupal 7.x files:
> select sum(file_size_bytes) from drupalfiles where file_name LIKE "%7.x%";
+----------------------+
| sum(file_size_bytes) |
+----------------------+
| 339582768746 |
+----------------------+
1 row in set (0.370 sec)
According to my math, that makes the Drupal 7.x footprint:
- 0.34Tb @ 1,000,000,000,000
- 339.58Gb @ 1,000,000,000
- 339,582.77Mb @ 1,000,000
- 339,582,768,746 bytes
CONCLUSION(S)
Based on my findings, I am now developing a script that will mirror those Drupal 7.x files.
I plan to get a Drupal 7.x mirror up and running ASAP.
g.
----
After today's discussion at Backdrop LIVE, I looked around to see the state of Drupal.org's move to Drupal 10. I didn't locate the Drupal 10 code base, but I did run across the Drupal 10 Migration Project, which has completed migrations for both Documentation Pages and the Forum (which I thought would be likely dropped in the D10 migration). However Book pages have yet to be migrated. This project seems to be very active with changes in the past few days. Perhaps a mad rush to try to get Drupal.org itself updated before the EOL date.
I expressed during the discussion that I don't think it's likely that the code (as in the Git history) for old Drupal versions is likely to be removed. Because the history of the code is the history of the contributors, and thus the copyright holders of the code. The GPL is built on copyright law and so maintaining that history is important from a legal perspective. It's still possible abandoned projects might get removed, but any project that was ported from D7 will likely maintain that history.