UPDATE: Fixed some errors which prevented a true vanilla install.

Drupal has a very powerful framework for building Content Management applications, but it's also got some great features for general web application development. In particular, Drupal 6 comes with a very powerful Forms API which greatly simplifies data capture and validation.

I've been working on ways to remove the dependency on core Drupal modules (particularly the 'node' module, which just isn't necessary or useful in some cases) and produced a patch which can be installed using the Drupal "profile" method.

Here's a comparison. Out of the box, Drupal requires these modules:

And enables these modules by default:

The experimental Drupal App patch removes all dependencies except for system and only enables system, block, update, and user by default. It also adds a new module, app which provides a replacement home page along with a sample form.

To apply this patch, just set up a directory with a vanilla Drupal 6.2 installation, cd to this directory and run this command:

patch -p1 -u < drupal-da-patch-0.1.diff > results.txt

Next, install Drupal using the Drupal App profile by going to the web address:

http://my-server/drupal/install.php?locale=en&profile=da

Note that you'll need to specify your locale (locale=en) at install time unless you enable the locale module.