Matt Glaman to Enhance Simplytest's Maintainability

Matt Glaman, a prominent figure in the Drupal community, has shared a blog post outlining his plans to revamp Simplytest, a widely-used platform for testing Drupal websites. With the goal of improving the project's maintainability, Matt Glaman intends to bring a fresh wave of changes to streamline development and encourage community contributions.

In 2021, Glaman collaborated with Adam Bergstein to modernize Simplytest, successfully migrating it away from Drupal 7. The project's code was transitioned from a self-managed virtual server owned by Adam to amazee.io's sponsored hosting on Lagoon. This migration marked a significant step in updating the platform to meet contemporary web standards.

However, the transition also inadvertently led to complexities that hindered the project's maintainability. Historically, Simplytest was publicly available as a Drupal distribution, making internal usage smooth. However, with the updated setup, the packaging became convoluted, necessitating a Composer build incorporating the Simplytest code base. This change introduced the challenge of managing two repositories for one system.

Glaman plans to refactor the project's structure and build processes to address these maintainability concerns. The goal is to streamline the development workflow, making it easier for contributors to collaborate effectively and troubleshoot issues. Emphasizing the importance of community involvement, Glaman aims to create a welcoming environment for bug fixes and feature enhancements.

The Drupal community eagerly awaits the forthcoming changes, confident that Glaman's efforts will fortify Simplytest's position as an indispensable testing tool for Drupal websites.