[search_api] Search API

My understanding is this module is becoming the new way forward for ApacheSolr and some other things, so moving to at least major.

January was unrealistic. The way it's currently going, May seems a better guess.

Hm. That's definitely going to be a huge setback for D8 adoption. :(

What is the best way for those who need this functionality faster to help?

Also, if funding is an issue, is there a place where we can point people to to donate?

What is the best way for those who need this functionality faster to help?

The usual:

• Non-coding help in the issue queue (my open issues and new issues for Search API or any other of my projects), like answering questions, reproducing problems, marking support requests as "Fixed" once they're answered and, especially, testing patches.
• Helping with Novice issues.
• For more experienced developers, also some of the other issues could be good places to help. Some of them require more knowledge of Search API and/or Drupal 8, but still don't require expert knowledge (which, unfortunately, only very few people have).
• At the end of November, at Drupalcamp Vienna, we also defined the list of Beta blockers, so those would be especially important issues to help with.

But even the first item, general help in the issue queue, would be great. The problem currently is that I have so much to do for my modules in D7 that not much of my free time remains for D8.

Also, if funding is an issue, is there a place where we can point people to to donate?

See my homepage, which has my PayPal address and a link to the Gratipay group (which I have also linked in my d.o profile).
For more specific funding, anyone is also free to contact me, either through my d.o contact form or the one on my homepage.

I recently secured some new funding, though, and am currently talking with someone else about more, so maybe there will be more progress in the next months.

Anyways, the problem is not only that I overestimated my free time, it's also that I underestimated the amount of work that still needs to go into this.

Unfortunately, we're still quite a bit away from Beta, so May is definitely unrealistic. July or August is what I'd now hope.
The large amount of free time the maintenance of my D7 modules take is still the main factor in the delay, so any help there would be greatly appreciated.

But I also want to thank the people who sent donations – it's very much appreciated, thanks a lot! If just a small fraction of people interested in Search API and D8 would donate, things would look quite differently. (But getting enough help in the issue queues is probably more realistic at this point, unless I get another large donor.)

I currently try to dedicate at least two days a week entirely to volunteer contrib work – it's just that a lot of that is taken up by D7.

OK, August sounds a bit unrealistic now for a stable release. But if I can manage to work on this for a few days, proceeding to the Beta phase in August should still be possible. I'd then guess October for the stable version – I don't think there's too much to do between Beta and Stable in our case.

(The main problem is still that ongoing maintenance is eating a lot of my contrib time – I now get about two new issues reported every single day (weekend included), in addition to all the comments on old issues.)

Getting closer, but still not completely there.
At least we're now in Beta phase.

Officially more than one year over the initial estimate now!
Maybe March, I don't know.

March actually looks quite good at the moment. There are only six blockers left, five of them relatively straight-forward.

However, there's also #2682369: Fix problems with overridden config entities (or #2744057: Inconsistencies when updating overridden config entities for Core) which has the potential to still hold this up. I urge anyone who has an interest in seeing a stable D8 port of this module and is relatively familiar with Core's config system to take a look at those issues and see if they can't find a way to nudge them along.

Forgot to update this, but we're now at RC 4 and the stable release 1.0 is planned for tomorrow.

And it's been released: Search API 8.x-1.0.