The OpenCivic distro of Drupal is designed to support communities of software developers in creating, cataloguing and sharing software applications. It is based on Code for America's Civic Commons project, which was created as a platform for sharing information specifically about "civic software" used by governments and nonprofit organizations to provide public services. The main goal of this distro therefore is to help build websites that enable people to share information about software applications — what they do, who created them and uses them, where they have been deployed, and how well the software works.

In addition to the standard Drupal requirements you will need the following to make use of OpenCivic:

• drush 3.1 - http://drupal.org/project/drush
• drush make 2.0 beta 9 - http://drupal.org/project/drush_make
• git - http://git-scm.com

OpenCivic for 7.x requires several patches to be applied to Drupal core. It provides a build-distro.make file for building a full Drupal distro including core patches as well as a copy of the opencivic install profile.

1. Grab the distro.make file from OpenCivic and run:

    $ drush make build-distro.make [directory]
   

   or use its url on Drupal.org directly:

    $ drush make "http://drupalcode.org/project/opencivic.git/blob_plain/refs/heads/7.x-2.x:/distro.make" [directory]
   

2. Choose the "OpenCivic" install profile when installing Drupal

Site builders can use OpenCivic as a starting point for their own install profiles. Basic steps for creating a new install profile called myprofile that extends OpenCivic:

1. Create the following directory and files:

    profiles/myprofile
    profiles/myprofile/distro.make
    profiles/myprofile/myprofile.info
    profiles/myprofile/myprofile.make
    profiles/myprofile/myprofile.install
   

2. Enter an include statement into distro.make to include the contents of the OpenCivic distro makefile and then add your new install profile to it:

    ; Include OpenCivic distro makefile via URL
    includes[] = http://drupalcode.org/project/opencivic.git/blob_plain/refs/heads/7.x-2.x:/distro.make
   
    ; Add myprofile to the full Drupal distro build
    projects[myprofile][type] = profile
    projects[myprofile][download][type] = git
    projects[myprofile][download][url] = git://github.com/myname/myprofile.git
   

3. Enter an include statement into myprofile.make to include the contents of the OpenCivic install profile makefile and then add any additional projects or overrides:

    ; Include OpenCivic install profile makefile via URL
    includes[] = http://drupalcode.org/project/opencivic.git/blob_plain/refs/heads/7.x-2.x:/drupal-org.make
   
    projects[feeds][version] = 2.0-alpha1
    projects[job_scheduler][version] = 2.0-alpha1
    ...
   

For more information about using makefiles see the drush make README.

4. Copy the contents of opencivic.info into myprofile.info and then adjust its contents to reflect the metadata, modules and theme you want to enable. For example:

    name = My First Drupal Distro
    core = 6.x
    description = Hello world!
   
    dependencies[] = feeds
    ...
   

5. Implement hook_install() in myprofile.install to do any other setup tasks for your install profile:

    <?php
   
    function myprofile_install() {
      theme_enable(array('stark'));
      variable_set('theme_default', 'stark');
    }
   

6. Build a full distro using the following command from profiles/myprofile:

    $ drush make distro.make [directory]
   

7. Choose "My First Drupal Distro" when installing Drupal!

• Sheldon Rampton