Glossary¶
Current terminology¶
Install profile¶
A drupal extension that can contain modules, themes, configuration, content and describes how to install a site.
Distribution¶
A special form of install profile which selects itself when uniquely available in the installer. Users of distributions expect upgrades to future versions and some level of support.
Starter kit¶
A special form of install profile (for example Contenta or Foundry) that provides a place to start with no upgrade path for the starter kit. For an early usage of this terminology with respect to install profiles see this video ( around 16:50).
Project¶
A drupal.org / composer packagist concept. Can be a single module or a group of modules. For example: Access Unpublished is a single module and Devel contains a group of modules. On drupal.org an install profile is also a project. Note: we often refer to modules that are not the same as the project name as submodules but in the Drupal extension system and composer ecosystem the concept of submodules has little meaning. The Drupal extensions considers all modules equally and Composer has no knowledge of modules and only knows about projects. The Update module in core is project-aware.
Module¶
Provides functionality and configuration in a single extension.
Theme¶
An extension that defines the visual look and feel of your site.
Starterkit theme¶
A tool for generating Drupal themes with default markup that is maintained in core.
Feature¶
A special type of module comprised of different site building components built using the Features module.
Tours¶
A tour walks users through how to configure and use Drupal. They are configuration entities provided by modules and install profiles.
Composer project template¶
A composer.json that via composer create-project supplies a starting point for a Drupal site. As part of the initiative these will get new capabilities to replace some of what install profiles (especially distributions) can do today.
New terminology¶
Drupal recipe¶
Drupal recipes allow the automation of Drupal module install and configuration via the user interface and via the Drupal recipe runner.