Drupal Lightning

How an upgrade from Drupal 8.2 to 8.5 took over 20 hours

And how it became a deep dive into understanding composer.json and your dependencies

Preface

  • Inherit site built in Drupal 8.3.x
  • Built using the Lightning distribution
    • Everything in git
    • No build process
  • Client filed ticket in January 2018
  • Work didn't begin till June 2018
    • Feature requests

How hard could it be?

Very

Have to vent on this. The lightning distribution for Drupal is absolute trash. Upgrades between versions are broken. Do not use. Period.

— Ashok Modi (@btmash) July 5, 2018

About presentation

  • Large chunk will be going through git logs
    • Looking at diff of composer.json
  • What it took to get there

Steps

Remove PHP version dependency

  • Server runs PHP 5.6
  • Locally run PHP 7.1
  • Add dependency in composer.json
  • "config": {
  ...
  "platform": {
    "php": "5.6"
  }
},

Splitting the issues

  • Upgrading Drupal was not the solution
  • Upgrade Lightning
    • Upgrade 2.1.x to 2.1.8 ☺
    • Upgrade from 2.1.8 to 2.2.9*
    • Upgrade from 2.2.9 to 3.0.6 ☺
    • Upgrade from 3.0.6 to 3.1.5*

 

☺ There were minor issues in the upgrade

* There were major issues in the minor releases

Upgrade from 2.1.x to 2.1.8

  • Minor issues involving pinned releases of dependencies
    • css-selector needed to be upgraded in order to work correctly
      • Changed from "2.7" to "~2.7"
        • This means the last digit of the version can be updated
    • Drupal Console needed to be pinned down in order to work correctly
      • Paragraphs (1.x-dev -> 1.2)
      • Smart Trim (actually versioned)
      • Pathauto (1.x -> 1.0)

Upgrade from 2.1.8 to 2.2.10

  • This became a multi-part issue of its own
  • Needed to upgrade from 2.1.8 to 2.2.3 (Drupal 8)
    • Pin down version of Drupal core (8.4.0)
      • Pathauto
      • Workbench
      • Media Entity Image
      • Media Entity Document

Upgrade to 2.2.4

  • *MUST* run the content migration from workbench moderation to content moderation
    • Lightning update mentions it is optional - it is not
    • Lightning 3.0.x removes the non-core moderation and scheduling modules
    • Found out the hard way
    • Otherwise you run drush wbm2cm manually

Upgrade to 2.2.10

  • Mostly smooth
  • Needed to bring in own dependencies that were previously in lightning
    • Scheduled updates
    • Features
    • Config update
    • Core could finally be on full 8.4.8

Upgrade to 3.0.6

  • Technically still 8.4.8
    • What is the point?
  • Completely revised the structure within acquia/lightning
    • drupal/lightning_api
    • drupal/lightning_core
    • drupal/lightning_media
    • drupal/lightning_workflow
    • drupal/lightning_layout
    • each has its own composer.json file (and dependencies)!

2.2.x to 3.0.x

  • Mostly the dev dependencies were not downloading
    • More were added to composer.json

3.0.x to 3.1.x

  • Jumping directly to the latest 3.1.5 version would be a large migration
    • Untested
  • Upgrade first to 3.1.0
    • Pin down version of Drupal core to 8.5.3 (will get all necessary security updates)
  • Then set time for larger migration
    • TBD!!!

Helpful bits of information

  • Pin things fully in composer if need be:
    • acquia/lightning: "3.1.0"
    • drupal/core: "8.5.3"
    • drupal/console: "~1.0.1"
      • Will allow last number to change
    • drush/drush: "^9.2.1"
      • Will allow last 2 numbers to change
    • drush/drush: "<9.0.0"
    • drush/drush: ">8.9.9"
    • drush/drush: "9.2.*"
    • More ideas

Helpful bits of information

  • Drupal project gives a lot of nice goodies
    • Pre/post scaffold commands
    • Add your own command
      • Needed to update by .htaccess file after scaffold reverts back to what comes from drupal.org
      • Also removes .git dirs from my vendor and contrib modules
"scripts": {
  "post-drupal-scaffold-cmd": [
    "git apply patches/swlaw-htaccess.patch",
    "find docroot -name .git | xargs rm -rf",
    "find vendor -name .git | xargs rm -rf"
  ]
},

Helpful bits of Information

  • Pin your PHP
    • Composer will download the releases that comply with the necessary version of PHP
  • I found composer update fickle to be honest
  • Created my own command
    • Can type composer nuke to get rid of dled deps
    • Followed by composer install
"scripts": {
  "nuke": "rm -rf composer.lock bin/* vendor docroot/core docroot/modules/contrib docroot/profiles"
}

Helpful bits of information

  • Keep track of your own composer.json
    • You may need to add additional patches and contrib modules/libraries here
  • Absolutely track your external composer.json dependencies as well
    • You may run into conflicts
      • You may need to pin down something in your composer.json that the external vendor has not accounted for