Chapter 5. Finishing up the Elaboration Phase

As the Milestone checklist shows (see Figure 5-1), you are almost done with the Elaboration phase. However, some additional work needs to be done on the first one, "Create an initial environment," and there is a little unfinished business regarding the second, "Whip up the initial prototype." Finally, there is one major milestone, "Work on the architectural baseline," where there is still a lot to be done.

Creating an Initial Environment

You've already gotten your hands dirty when you worked on your development box, then saved everything to the repository and deployed to the test site via that repository. Now you just need to get a more focused view of how you are going to tool yourself up on this project, with some development modules to make your life a little easier, and a clearer, more polished idea of the process work flow. Luckily, there are a few modules that came to the fore during the tail end of the Drupal 5 life cycle that are really going to make your life easier, plus one old favorite that's been around, fortunately, for a long while — Devel:

  • Update status module: http://drupal.org/project/update_status

  • Drupal shell module: http://drupal.org/project/drush

  • Devel module: http://drupal.org/project/devel. Even for Drupal 5.x, this module "for Drupal developers and inquisitive admins" is a real lifesaver, as a perusal of its features will show. Later on in this book, you will find out about the fabulous support for real-time theming ...

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