Backdrop LIVE is based upon an unconference model. Anyone can declare a topic up through the day of the event and the schedule is subject to change at any time. What would you like to talk about?

This discussion topic is based upon a conversation that has been happening in the Drupal issue queues:
https://www.drupal.org/project/ideas/issues/3238659

There are calls in the Drupal community to provide long term support for Drupal 7. Some folks in the Backdrop CMS community believe that in a way, Backdrop CMS could already be a long term option for Drupal 7 sites that are not able or willing to move to more recent versions of Drupal.

Yet, Backdrop is not a drop in replacement for Drupal 7. Moving to Backdrop requires an upgrade that is easier than moving to Drupal 9, but it is not trivial, especially for the folks with large amounts of custom code in their Drupal 7 sites.

Is there a role for Backdrop CMS?

Can or should we think about Backdrop CMS as an "unofficial" Drupal Classic?

What can we still do to make the Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS upgrade even easier?

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Comments

Thu, Jul 14th, 2022 - 8:59pm PDT by stpaultim

This might be a crazy idea and/or impossible. BUT...

It's my understanding that there is legacy code from Drupal 7 that is still in Backdrop but not necessarily exposed or required for new Backdrop sites. That some Drupal 7 things that are not officially supported for Backdrop, will work if folks know how to access them. 

Would it be possible to provide alternative upgrade paths for some Drupal 7 sites that making upgrading easier, but doesn't provide all of the new features for Backdrop - and that sites have a way of doing a minimal upgrade with the hope that we might be able to provide easiser upgrade paths for other Backdrop features in the future. 

I'm thinking about a world in which a Drupal 7 site is able to upgrade to Backdrop, but bypass the layout system and use their Drupal 7 theme on a temporary basis. Would they be able to get some basic Backdrop features, but not have access to the ones that make upgrading more complicated for them?

Just a crazy idea...

Sat, Jul 16th, 2022 - 7:33am PDT by joseph.olstad

It would be a wise marketting move to have some sort of slogan or branding of Backdrop CMS as being Drupal Classic.  With that said, given the long term success of Drupal 7 having penetrated 1 million plus installs and still around 500,000 installs 12 years later, I would think that forking Drupal 7 as-is and backporting the look and feel of Backdrop into Drupal 7 Fork Classic , leveraging nearly or possibly ALL of Drupal 7 contrib would seem like a very logical way to go.

There's some very strong developers in the Backdrop CMS project that have dedicated years to the project , I realize that it would be difficult to convince these members of the idea of Forking Drupal 7 and porting some of the Backdrop CMS look and feel and functionality to it while maintaining a high degree of drop-in compatibility.

I guess what I'm looking for is a way to unify Backdrop CMS with Drupal 7 in a compatible way to harness a super easy drop in replacement upgrade path for Acquias Drupal 7 core.

I have a script that managed to clone over 42000 repositories linked to Drupal.org , however so much intelligence of Drupal is in the actual drupal.org site, it would pretty much be necessary to clone that as well and fork it with all the comments and patch files.

Maybe talking into the wind here but I think many will see what I'm saying and understand it.

Dries seems bound and determined to end Drupal classic so I think the only option is to fork and clone.  The way way back machine probably not powerful enough to store drupal.org so we'd have to probably find some way to keep that intelligence before they break it.

Fri, Oct 14th, 2022 - 2:22pm PDT by laryn

I missed this conversation last time -- did anyone take notes?