CMI Documentation [META]

Problem/Motivation

The problem:

The Configuration Management Initiative has changed its approach, which has rendered the Configuration Management documentation out-of-date.

In earlier versions of Drupal 8.x, the active configuration was stored on disk in YAML files, with a cached version (defaulting to the database) used for accessing the values on normal pages.

Now the default configuration is stored in a database table, while import/synchronization and export still operate via YAML files.

The documentation does not reflect this change and needs to be updated.

The change record is located at: https://drupal.org/node/1861064

Proposed resolution

About five people at DrupalCon Austin created the following list of remaining tasks. The main work to be done is to review the current documentation and update it to reflect the new state of the Configuration Management Initiative.

If you'd like to work on the Configuration Management documentation, please review the tasks below and make your improvements directly to the community docs node.

If you don't understand the functionality well enough to improve the documentation, please add a comment with your questions. Those of us working on the project will try to improve the documentation based on that feedback.

Remaining tasks

• Review the CMI change notice: https://drupal.org/node/2241059
• Review the existing documentation: https://drupal.org/node/1861064
• Find additional related items
• Update the existing documentation.

Suggested improvements to the documentation:

On "Configuration Management" page:

• Define what “configuration” is.
• Incorporate a description of the required basic concepts (https://drupal.org/node/1861070) on the main doc page. Introduce activestore and datastore concepts earlier.

On "Basic Concepts" page

• Clarify active store (saved in db?) vs. data store (saved in yaml files?)
• Clarify “Track Configurations”: Is this an action the user needs to take? Is this something that automatically happens?
• Clarify “identifier”: Is this generated automatically? How does this get created?

User interface changes

None.

API changes

None.

Notes to keep in mind

In addition to CMI functionality provided in core, there is a contributed module. This meta issue focuses on the core module.