Are you prepared to take a chance with Experimental Modules

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Are you prepared to
take a chance with
Experimental Modules?
Matic Cretnik
Agiledrop

Lately, a lot of our attention has been dedicated
to Drupal modules
We have explored the most popular ones and
the best for Drupal 8
But we will not stop here
We'll also look at the experimental modules,
which may confuse some Drupal users
As you will see, there is also some risk in having
them

What are the experimental modules?
As stated on the official website of Drupal, experimental modules are modules
that are included in Drupal core but are for testing purposes, so they are not
(yet) fully supported
This new approach was introduced in Drupal 8
New experimental modules can only be added in minor releases
They may change between patch releases, while still being experimental
That differs them from the other features
Experimental modules allow site builders and core contributors to receive
feedback and test out functionality that might eventually be supported in an
upcoming minor release and might be included as a stable part of Drupal core
However, not any module can be experimental, because they too have to
meet the minimal standards

Alpha, Beta, Release candidate …
There are different stability levels of the experimental modules
Alpha experimental modules are still under development
They are, however available for testing, but may include bugs, security
issues and the developers should not rely on their APIs
Beta experimental modules are, on the other hand, considered API and
feature complete
They are still not fully supported and may still have bugs
If critical bugs are removed, the experimental module can become
a release candidate, which means that it is release-ready
Once they are judged as stable, they are labelled as stable core modules
But they can become so only in minor or major releases

Examples
These are experimental modules in Drupal 8.0, released in November 2015

However, the number of the experimental modules has at
least doubled since then
Until recently, it was only the Big Pipe module that »has
evolved« from being an experimental module to being an
official module
But there might (!) be two more in Drupal 8.4.0 on 4th
October 2017, as the Drupal 8.4.x Media API has become
stable, after an enormous effort by the Drupal Media
Initiative
The second one is DateTime Range, which also became
stable for Drupal 8.4.0.

On the other hand, several experimental modules have 8.4.x
alpha deadlines, which is on Monday next week (31th July!),
when Drupal 8.4.0-alpha1 will be released. If these
experimental modules will not reach their follow-up
requirements until that deadline, they may be removed from
core. These experimental modules are:
1. Workflows and Content Moderation
2. Inline Form Errors
3. Place Blocks
4. Settings Tray

Drupal 8.4.0-beta1 will be then released on the week
of August 14th, while the release candidate phase will
begin the week of September 4th

Possible risks
Despite the fact that new capabilities can be added faster to Drupal – for that
you have previously required a new major version – there are some possible
risks of having the experimental modules
As you may have found out, not all experimental modules became or will
become stable core modules
If they turn out not to be a good fit, they are removed from the core in future
versions
Moreover, they can even change
That basically means that if you have found a solution to optimize your work,
you may, after some time, be left without it
So, there were some arguments about, what kind of message does the Drupal
send to the end users by giving them something that might not work

There are of course some other reasons for experimental
modules to not become the stable core modules
They may not have made a sufficient progress or a better
solution in core supersedes the module
Nevertheless, the experimental modules do not share
core's version
When you want to enable them, you get the message
saying "Use at your own risk", which is also a big problem,
especially with the users that do not like to take risks
The risks are, in general, connected with APIs, bugs,
security and other issues

All in all, it will be once again up to everyone to
choose whether to use experimental modules
But as the founder of Drupal Dries Buytaert said
on DrupalCon Baltimore, it’s probably not wise to
use them in production

Are you prepared to take a chance with Experimental Modules

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Are you prepared to take a chance with Experimental Modules