Site fingerprint

Goal: build tools and services that let developers create and explore a configuration dump from a project.

Most software projects have a sort of settings dump utility that allows users to make a comprehensive list of the configurations of a software implementation. Until recently it was not really feasible to do this in Drupal (except maybe for a database dump). However now that we have features this is not all that impossible anymore. In this project we already built a module that makes it possible for site developers and maintainers to easily create an object that contains all the exportables (+some extras) of a site in an easily readable format.

We imagine that you will be able to use site fingerprints amongst others to:

  • See if and how a sites' settings have changed
  • Compare sites
  • Analyze configuration practices
  • Help identifying the causes of bugs
  • Help automating the documentation of a site

We also created a fingerprint server, that you can use to collect site dumps from the projects you work on. By default the fingerprint module is configured to send fingerprints to the modulecraft fingerprint server, a free service we give to the community that developers can use for example to share site configurations for bug tracking purposes (you can of course also use it for the other purposes).

User stories

User stories Points Priority
As a Site builder I want to be able to on the click of a button, export as much of my settings as possible so that I can use this as a reference object N/A
Your rating: None Average: 4 (4 votes)
As a developer I want to identify what settings are stored in what exportable so that I can create new features more easily N/A
Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)
As a Site builder I want to see the list of modules that can be exported so that I can be sure that my settings are properly tracked N/A
Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)
As a Site builder I want to get notifications if an important site setting is changed so that I can avoid conflicting changes in my team. N/A
Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)
As a project owner I want to be able to compare 2 fingerprints of a site so that I can get a general picture about the presence, the amount and the type of changes N/A
Your rating: None Average: 3 (2 votes)
As a developer or site owner I want to be able to see a display that is optimized for the display of chronological changes so that I can "replay" how changes were done on a site N/A
Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (3 votes)
As a developer I want to compare multiple fingerprints so that I can find patterns that are repeated between sites N/A
Your rating: None Average: 2 (2 votes)
As a developer I want to be able to hide parts of the fingerprint so that I can focus on the important parts N/A
Your rating: None Average: 2 (2 votes)
As a developer I want to have an automatic site fingerprint created in the background at certain trigger points (e.g. before a new module is installed, cron, ...) so that I can easily see what settings "belong" to the configuration of a module or module group N/A
Your rating: None Average: 2 (2 votes)
As a documentation writer I want to be able to identify already documented use cases in a site fingerprint so that I can automatically generate a draft documentation for projects and save work N/A
No votes yet
As a Site builder I want to integrate fingerprint module with actions so that I can automatize and customize site fingerprint generation. N/A
No votes yet
If you have a new user story for this project you can add it here.