Talking Drupal #522 - New Contrib Records System

Sep 29, 2025

Fran Garcia-Linares, a Drupal web developer, and Tim Lehnen, engineering lead at the Drupal Association, dive into the new Contribution Records System. They discuss the challenges of migrating millions of entities and the importance of accurate crediting. The redesigned system simplifies how contributions are tracked and displayed. Future enhancements include broader contributions beyond code, like events and localization. Gamification and new API endpoints for data querying are also on the horizon, promoting community engagement.

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ANECDOTE

Migration Handled Millions Of Records

Fran cited drupal.org's scale: ~2M users, ~1.5M issues, ~5M contributor entries and >10M comments.
She called migrating that data a constant engineering challenge requiring optimizations and background processes.

INSIGHT

All Closed Issues Are Creditable Now

Contribution credit now applies to any closed status, not only 'fixed', simplifying attribution.
This change also eases migration because GitLab only has open/close semantics.

ADVICE

Plan For Transition Friction

Expect extra clicks during the transition and plan for some UX friction.
Prioritize GitLab workflows as issues migrate to reduce context switching later.

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Today we are talking about the New Contribution Records System, how it's changed, and what you may need to do differently with guests Fran Garcia-Linares & Tim Lehnen. We'll also cover Config Notify as our module of the week.

This episode is sponsored by Amazee.ai

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/522

Topics

Understanding the Contribution Record System
Recent Changes and Migration Challenges
Assigning and Displaying Contribution Credits
Future Enhancements and Broader Contributions
Collaborating on Commit Message Format
GitLab Migration and Contribution Records
Integration Challenges with GitLab
Testing and Feedback on New System
Future Plans and Community Involvement
API Endpoints and Data Querying
Gamification and Broader Adoption

Resources

Millions of data talk
- Slides (in Spanish)
- Video not available yet
Gitlab issue for feature request for contribution
Contribution records module
https://www.drupal.org/project/contribution_records
New available endpoints:
- https://new.drupal.org
- https://git.drupalcode.org/project/contribution_records/-/blob/1.0.x/README.md?ref_type=heads#endpoints-to-query-data
Issue to track issue migration
- https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalorg/issues/3295357

Guests

Fran Garcia-Linares - fjgarlin Tim Lehnen - drupal.org/association/staff hestenet

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Hayden Baillio - hgbaillio

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Brief description:
- Have you ever needed to maintain a site where a site owner had access to update site configuration, and wanted to be notified whenever they did so? There's a module for that
Module name/project name:
- Config Notify
Brief history
- How old: created in Feb 2020 by Fran Garcia-Linares (fjgarlin), one of today's guests
- Versions available: 8.x-1.11, which supports Drupal 8.8 and newer
Maintainership
- Actively maintained
- Security coverage
Number of open issues: 2 open issues, neither of which are bugs
Usage stats:
- 194 sites
Module features and usage
- Just like it sounds, this module lets you trigger notifications when the configuration deviates from the config management code in production.
- You can choose for the notifications to be sent immediately, or via cron, with an option for a daily digest. The notifications can be sent by email, or via Slack, using the slack module (if enabled).
- This should be an easy-to-implement solution if you support a site where users may be updating the site configuration in production. A different approach was discussed back in episode #236 Top Down Configuration