Profiler Builder project page

Today marks a new exciting release of a little known developer module called Profiler Builder.  I typically don’t make release announcements of this kind but I think this is a game-changer for distribution and installation profile development.  Installation profiles are great to use but much like distributions, are little understood in how they work or how best to create them.

That’s where Profiler Builder picks up the ball.  The latest version will do the following for you:

• Find all Modules, Themes, Libraries, and Patches in use and write them accurately to a make file (via a Site Builder UI)
• Create a well made .info, .profile, and .install file
• Package all of these up and give you a downloadable .tar file when you click Download

It has lots of documented hooks to make your own builds more accurate if there are settings that you know you want to remove.  You can also bring settings back in that the module removes by default if you have reason to do so.  It also comes with a Drush command that let’s you take the current site and turn it into a install profile with a command like:

drush distro my_new_distro_name –untar

This will automatically add the site’s install profile mapping and associated make file to profiles/my_new_distro_name as well as create best practice folders.