Designing Distros Defensively

Drupal 8's configuration management system makes it easier than ever to build awesome distributions, but there are many pitfalls. Building a rock-solid, maintainable distribution is about more than just picking and packaging modules -- you need to think about how everything fits together, how to make everything work smoothly, and how to keep your users up-to-date when you can't be sure what might have changed (or how). This session will share some strategies and techniques for treating distributions as products -- updatable, maintainable, testable, and future-proof.

Topics will include:

• What are all the moving parts in a distro?
• How do you manage a ton of configuration? And more importantly, how opinionated should you be about it?
• How to get a rogue's gallery of modules to play nicely together
• How to automatically test a distro, even after updating, to make sure things always work

In short, how to dance smoothly through the minefields that arise when you're managing and maintaining configuration for 30 modules in a single package.

Attendees should have intermediate site building experience and at least a passing familiarity with configuration management in Drupal 8. You should know how to implement a hook. And when you walk out of here, you will be able to create a solid distro that is perfect
for your recurring and future needs. You won't need to build reusable systems over and over again from scratch or clone a database in order to implement your basic features. And you'll understand how to navigate the maze of configuration management so that you can
keep users of your distribution secure, happy and up-to-date.