Drupal Contrib Development

This is a set of tools for developing Drupal contrib modules and themes in the context of a project.

Features

Swich to clone command

This is a Composer command which switches a Drupal module from being installed normally to using a git clone that is symlinked into the project.

This allows testing and developing a contrib module in the context of a project.

For example, suppose your Widgets.Com website is using the drupal_cats module, but you have found a bug in it. You can make changes to the drupal_cats module files, but they are not under version control, so you cannot make a MR on drupal.org from them. You could copy them to a separate git clone of drupal_cats, but that quickly becomes tedious with multiple files. Furthermore, your project's installed copy of drupal_cats is at a fixed release (hopefully!), and the code you want to fix may have changed in the latest HEAD.

The Switch to clone command makes this all simple to do:

1. Your project has the drupal/drupal_cats package installed with Composer.
2. Do composer drupal-contrib:switch-clone drupal_cats. This does the following:
   1. The drupal_cats git repository is cloned into the ./repos folder in your project.
   2. A Composer path repository is added to composer.json, which points to this git clone. This should not be added to version control; it is only needed temporarily while you work on code in the contrib module's git clone.
   3. Composer is updated to use the drupal/drupal_cats from this repository. This creates a symlink from the ./repos/drupal_cats folder into the project's ./modules/contrib folder, replacing the previously installed version of the drupal_cats module.
3. You can now use the git clone of drupal_cats as normal:
   • Make a feature branch for your fix
   • Check out a fork branch from drupal.org to evaluate a fix
   • Test your code in the context of your project.
   • Push your changes to a drupal.org merge request.

When your fix is ready, remove the 'drupal_cats' path repository from your composer.json, and do composer update drupal/drupal_cats to switch your project back to using the distribution version of the drupal/drupal_cats package.

If you need to perform any Composer operations in the meantime, you may need to temporarily switch the git repository to the main development branch or the release tag where it was checked out to begin with, in order to satisfy Composer's package version requirements.

Switch back to package release command

This is a Composer command which switches a Drupal module from being installed as a symlink to a git clone, to be being installed normally from a package release.

Use this command to reverse the effect of the composer drupal-contrib:switch-clone command, and restore your project's usage of the module to normal operation.

1. Your project has the drupal/drupal_cats package installed from a symlink.
2. Do composer drupal-contrib:switch-package drupal_cats. This does the following:
   1. The Composer path repository which points to the git clone is removed from composer.json.
   2. Composer is updated to download the drupal/drupal_cats package.

The git repository for the module is not changed or deleted. You can change back to using this with the drupal-contrib:switch-clone command.

Make and apply patch command

This is a Composer command which applies your work in a module's git clone to the project as a patch.

Use this when you have finished work on a bug or a feature in a contrib module, and want to apply this fix to your project's codebase. The diff from a drupal.org merge request is not always suitable in this scenario, as the merge request will be on the development branch of the module, and the diff for this might not apply to the version that your project it using. Instead, this command takes a diff from the feature branch to the release that your project has installed.

This requires the project to have the cweagans/composer-patches package installed.

1. Your project has the drupal/drupal_cats package installed with Composer, and a git clone at repos/drupal_cats which has your work in a feature branch.
2. Do composer drupal-contrib:apply-patch-from-branch drupal_cats. This does the following:
   1. A git diff is taken from the feature branch in repos/drupal_cats to the current version of the installed package.
   2. The git diff is written to a patch file in /patches.
   3. Composer is updated to apply the patch to the drupal/drupal_cats package.

You should also contribute your fix back to drupal.org as a merge request!

Installation

Install with Composer:

composer require joachim-n/drupal-project-contrib-development

Roadmap

• Get the issue title to use in the patch name and composer.json description.
• Add other useful things.