Features

Despite being into Drupal and believing in the software and the community, one tends to know the faults of one's own software better than the faults of other software. So the image of WordPress is something that just works, and is able to do seamless upgrades version after version, etc.

But, obviously, it's not right for everything, and its fans can realize that, too.

Most recently i did this in the Drush script Scaffolding:

drupal 7 programmatically create node in installation profile
http://www.group42.ca/creating_and_updating_nodes_programmatically_in_drupal_7

I have spent the day discovering that you cannot populate with content the content type created in a Feature module using the .install file of that Feature module.

The biggest problem is likely complex variables in the variable table (nested arrays which become serialized). Here is a solution for changing only part of a complex variable: http://groups.drupal.org/node/52588#comment-144213 (if this doesn't work or is awkward, i have a similar solution that i can dig up, but i believe mine is less robust).

I think drupal_array_merge_deep() may be the function we want to use in these cases.

See also Hally Turner's notes on this presentation.

irakli and jmiccolis know more, this draws in part on their presentations.

Distributions contain installation profiles
(an installation profile does not contain a distribution)

install profiles are install time only
- run custom install tasks
- enable modules and themes

A lot of those on Drupal.org are old, not released, or unmaintained