Friendly role based username and passwords for dummy devel generated user accounts

For Devel there is no such thing as a stable release. Devel is continuously in development, but the -dev version is usually better than any given release. Posting a patch for anything but HEAD pretty much ensures that no one will use it...

I see your use case, but requiring such a large number of roles and users that you need to use devel_generate to create them, is a very special requirement that isn't of general interest, so we will probably not accept it into the repository, but as you write, it can certainly be useful for some people.

Whilst I am aware that the Devel maintainers are incredibly busy working on one of the most useful and dynamic suites of development tools for Drupal, I thought I would just throw my +1 into this issue, because there is nothing worse than just grombling silently.

I am developing a community website (not for the first time) and in order to be able to demo it to the client, it's useful to be able to stuff it with users and content. Whilst I fully appreciate content can be nothing more than basically jibberish, I do find it frustrating and a little embarrassing that the users are always called

Mr. ozCKmXxbycu5DdxhmReJwxuSRaqiBSR8HEVGWvEm ouYqGUirNhWJsDyjyiQVVkUUgvxzxJvQBe9FviEZmAKqDHyF5pKSvjg9ksJ7rWZHbhtEd5Z9fsbnhXm7

and, his friend:

Dr. BJAewXqSec4JMuTknKgs7HCuy93K9JF3Kv28FDeF izWZFn5H45xMhaLYoT6SnhzrLfupbvuUH777LdBHMbCvTBit6wjeertVncgmQwHuiB2qyyc3H9CxXom7

:D

Using this patch I was eventually able to get the user names and human names sequentially "portal user n" which was brilliant, also with valid passwords, but my hack of this patch of the original module is a little... shakey to say the least! Would it be a wildly inappropriate to "pretty please" the developers into looking at token driven key fields, or "random string length" so we can at least humorously attempt to pronounce the names?! Cheers for a great module (and patch) though.

@wikidkaka: Thank you for your patch — I hope it continues to be useful for others.

@srlawr: Thank you for your kind comments. The picture is not quite as rosy as you paint it, though. We're not toiling away at Devel all day. Devel thrives on users like you identifying functionality that you (and lots of others!) need and posting patches. Probably the most important part of the maintainer's job is to keep things out of their modules that would endanger their long-term survival (read: maintenance).

This means we'll have to judge for every proposed feature whether it has a broad enough appeal to warrant burdening the module with it now, and whether we're ready to spend part of our own lives to take that feature into the future (such as porting it to the next version of Drupal) or whether we can be confident that others will readily jump in and devote their time and energy to the cause.

For a widely used module like Devel, we must be especially picky. Lots of users means lots of new ideas, but the module cannot just keep growing indefinitely. One type of request gets special treatment though: if you can make a case that a certain hook at some strategic point would enable add-on modules to provide additional functionality/customizability, then your chances are good to get what you need.

Here this could be a drupal_alter('devel_generate_username', ...) call that would enable you to implement hook_devel_generate_username_alter() where you could customize your user names as you wish.

Quick review shows a few minor errors:

+++ b/devel_generate/devel_generate.incundefined
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
-function devel_create_users($num, $kill, $age = 0, $roles = array()) {

new argument should have new @param docs

+++ b/devel_generate/devel_generate.incundefined
@@ -33,23 +33,65 @@ function devel_create_users($num, $kill, $age = 0, $roles = array()) {
-      $name = devel_generate_word(mt_rand(6, 12));
-      $names[$name] = '';
+    	$roles_map = drupal_map_assoc($roles);
+    	$role_rand = NULL;
+    	// Check for patterns entered only when generated users are to be assigned to a role type.
+    	if (count($roles_map) > 1) {

indentation is not following standards

Closing for lack of activity. Feel free to reopen if the issue still exists