Install profile that automatically inserts data / config settings

Question

I am trying to create a custom installation profile for small internal usage and I'd like to hide certain steps and also implement new functions as a quick-and-dirty way to pre-populate some default content (nodes, blocks, menus) and configuration settings (wysiwyg) by inserting them into the database during the profile installation.

I am using the standard profile as a guide to work from as well as following this guide, but having trouble getting this to work smoothly and since it's all pre-installation I can't use devel to troubleshoot (it's not enabled yet).

Let's call the custom installation profile customprofile and the files I have are:

• customprofile_profile.info
• customprofile_profile.profile
• customprofile_profile.install

I've figured out (for example) how to override the "Select locale" step and hard-code that to be English in customprofile_profile.profile:

function customprofile_install_tasks_alter(&$tasks, $install_state) {
  $tasks['install_select_locale']['display'] = FALSE;
  $tasks['install_select_locale']['function'] = 'customprofile_select_locale';
}

function customprofile_select_locale (&$install_state) {
  $install_state['parameters']['locale'] = 'en';
}

...but I haven't been able to track down the syntax for:

1) inserting a new step at the end of the profile install

2) inserting some SQL (I found this old post but it seems to be for Drupal 6 and both the profile syntax and SQL insertion are incompatible with Drupal 7)

Any guidance for next steps on either/both of these would be appreciated!

Answer 1

You might find drush-make useful, especially if you already have a codebase setup that you would like to replicate. As outlined in this blog post:

Drush Make includes 2 commands which are already built in Drush itself:

• make — Turns a .makefile into a Drupal codebase.
• make-generate — Generates a .makefile from the current Drupal site.

Both commands are related to a .makefile — flat text file with Drush Make instructions. You can read more about .makefile syntax here.