Help us complete the Drupal Console release v1.0.0

If you are reading this you maybe are aware or have an idea what is the Drupal Console, but just in case you are not; this is a brief explanation.

Drupal Console is a CLI tool to generate boilerplate code, interact and debug Drupal 8. From the ground up, it has been built to use the same modern PHP practices that were introduced in Drupal 8. The Drupal Console uses Symfony Console and other third party components.

For more detailed information about this, you can visit the following links:

• Why should you care about it

• How does Drupal Console help?

  Why are we asking for help?

The Drupal Console as many other Open Source projects is created based on passion and free time of developers, which is great but, sometimes the community requires those tools early than the contributors can produce using only in their free time.

One example of that is the Drupal 8 Accelerate program [link] or d8rules funding program with the aim to bring to the community those products as soon is possible, getting money to sponsor contributors office hours to complete those products within a specific timeline.

Our situation is not different than others projects, with the exception that the core maintainers have some hours per week sponsored by our employers and business. But this time, is not enough, and we need to use our personal time to continue with the development.

Another situation will be if we have the option to focus our attention on DrupalConsole project, in that way we could assign more time attending the issue queue. Currently with 100+ pending fixes or feature requests, providing support on the Gitter channel [link] and do a much better work with the documentation and improving the test coverage.

Therefore, we need some financial assistance to try to deliver our first stable release as soon as possible.

Why the stable release it's important for the Drupal Community?

Last Nov 19th of 2015, after almost five years of developing Drupal 8 was released. That is a remarkable accomplish for our community, but Drupal 8 it's not gaining too much traction in terms developers moving to Drupal 8, part of that reason could be the holiday seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But could also be because of the high learning curve for old and new developers to understand Drupal 8.
[image of infinite loop learning curve].

For that reason, the Drupal Console core maintainers want to create an internal deadline to release the first stable release. Deadline is the next DrupalCon New Orleans.

Getting a stable release of Drupal Console, the community we will have a new tool to help them to get involved in Drupal 8 development process, reducing the cost of learning and developing new Drupal 8 components.

How can you help us?

The only way to think we could meet our deadline is working full time in Drupal Console project this means at least 120* hours per week (4 members compose our core maintainer team).

Of course, this kind of commitment has a cost, in our case is the cost we need to cover to continue our lives expenses.

Now, the big question is how we can get the budget to accomplish this. After some deliberations, we decided to run a Crowdfunding campaign to request enough money to reach our first Beta version.

if we exceed the goal we will use this money to continue with release candidates and finally the stable release and attend Drupal events to spread the word talking about the project and organize sprints; you could see the component of each milestone below.

M1 - Beta release. Mar

• Implement Drupal Coding standards in all of the generated code.
• Create tests for code generator commands.
• Complete English documentation.
• Improve learning capabilities for not generator commands.

M2 - RC release. April

• Implement a CI workflow.
• Create tests for the 50% of not generator commands.
• Improve learning capabilities in 50% of the generator commands.
• Complete Spanish documentation.

M3 -Stable release. May

• Create tests for the 100% of not generator commands.
• Improve learning capabilities in 100% of the generator commands.
• Release drupalgenerator.com MVP

What if we do not meet the Crowdfunding goal?

Nevertheless, Don't worry if we don't get the enough money to complete the milestones in the timeframe proposed, of course, we will continue with the development, in the same way, we have been working until now, so the stable will be ready when it's ready.

But, how you can change that situation, As a business owner your company could assign some developer(s) time to contribute to Drupal Console, and if you are and independent developer you can help use allocating some hours as well, we always have issues to resolve none of them are rocket science.

You can also help us to spread the word by inviting us and covering flights and/or hotel rooms to participate at your Drupal event, attend to DrupalCon New Orleans. One of our goals is to take part in as many Drupal events we can, to talk about the project and organize sprints to help developers to start contributing to Drupal Console.

Please, join us in this adventure in Open Source.