$Id: README.txt,v 1.1.2.2 2009-05-12 04:44:11 yhahn Exp $

Features for Drupal 6.x

Installation
------------
Features can be installed like any other Drupal module -- place it in
the modules directory for your site and enable it on the
admin/build/modules page. To take full advantage of some of the
workflow benefits provided by Features, you should install Drush [1].

1: http://drupal.org/project/drush

What is a feature?
------------------
In short, each feature is a module. A feature differs from most other
modules in that it is a collections of exportables from other modules
configured to work together. Features, in short, capture a specific
use case by taking advantage of larger, generalized, Drupal tools.
Examples of features might be:

* A blog
* A pressroom
* An image gallery
* An e-commerce t-shirt store

And so on. See API.txt for more information about the guts of feature
modules.

Basic usage
-----------
Features is geared toward usage by developers and site builders. It
is not intended to be used by the general audience of your Drupal site.
Features provides tools for accomplishing two important tasks:

Task 1: Export features

You can create features in Drupal by using site building tools. The ones
that currently integrate against Features are node, cck, views, context,
and imagecache. Other modules may integrate if they use common Drupal APIs
(for example, you can include a block from another module in your feature
or a different CCK field formatter), but modules that do things wildly
on their own or have problematic APIs will not work well.

Once you've created a feature, you can export it into a feature module by
using the export inteface at admin/features/export. Currently the export
interface requires you to start from a context -- however the API has
been designed that there might be other starting points for generating
features in the future.

Task 2: Manage features

The features module also provides a way to manage features through a more
targeted interface than admin/build/modules. The interface at admin/features
shows you only feature modules, and will also inform you if any of their
components have been overridden. If this is the case, you can also re-export
features to bring the module code up to date with any changes that have
occurred in the database.

Drush usage
-----------
Features provides several useful drush commands:

drush features

  This command lists all the features on your and their status as well
  as any supplemental information.

drush features export [context]

  This command lets you create a new feature in code from one or more
  context definitions. It will write a new feature module with a name
  matching the ->value portion of the context definition.

drush features update [feature]

  This command lets you update a feature that has already been
  exported. You can use it to push overrides/changes in your database
  (for example, a new Views display) into the existing code of your
  feature module.

drush features revert [feature]

  This command lets revert aspects of a feature in your site's database
  to the state described in your feature module's defaults. For
  example, if you have overridden one of your feature's contexts, a
  drush revert command will revert those changes and return the feature
  on your site to its original state.

For developers
--------------
Please read API.txt for more information about the concepts and integration
points in the Features module.

Maintainers
-----------
yhahn (Young Hahn)
jmiccolis (Jeff Miccolis)