Posted by Wolf_22 on Tue, Oct 31, 2017 - 8:48pm --- Updated: Nov 13 '17 - 12:33pm

A lot of problems have arisen over in Drupal Land where people have been forced to use things like Composer in order to just test modules out... Take the Commerce Guys "Address" module as a perfect example: To try it out, one must first download and install Git, then download and configure Composer, then issue commands to download Address whereby you're then expected to log into the D8 site to enable the module... That's an awful tech debt just to test something out and because of this, it's acting as incentive for many people to jump from the Drupal ship once and for all.

Does Backdrop have similar workflows and if not, are you guys intended to force users into things like that? I get the value of version control systems and dependency managers but they shouldn't act as prerequisites for using something like Drupal (or Backdrop) as they represent tools some view as necessary while others may not.

I'd love to read your guys' thoughts on this (which I'm sure you've covered already but being new to Backdrop, I've been out of your guys' loop).

Thanks in advance and keep up the great work.

Most helpful answers

I was excited about D8 but

I was excited about D8 but all that went out the window when it would not install on a shared hosting account with out shell access and some convoluted way of installing things. That was it for me for Drupal and have built lot of sites using Drupal since D5.

That's a great question @Wolf

So far there are no plans to use a composer-based workflow for Backdrop. There are some advanced users who may choose to go that route, but it is absolutely not required for the majority of people who use Backdrop CMS to also use composer, or even Git.

Comments

jenlampton's picture

Mon, Nov 13, 2017 - 12:37pm by jenlampton

So far there are no plans to use a composer-based workflow for Backdrop. There are some advanced users who may choose to go that route, but it is absolutely not required for the majority of people who use Backdrop CMS to also use composer, or even Git.

Fri, Jul 24, 2020 - 10:41am by Michael-IDA

Hi Jen,

This page (seemingly the “Official” how to install Drush for Backdrop?):

https://backdropcms.org/project/drush

indicates one MUST use either composer or Lando to install Drush globally?

Can you link to the Backdrop documentation on how to install a global Drush by command line (e.g. without any third party tools like composer, Lando, etc.)?

Thank you,
Michael

Note:
This is the Google result for “backdrop composer.”  As such please either answer all backdrop composer installations questions here or link to the answers from here (or you’ll waste a lot of peoples’ time).

Wed, Aug 05, 2020 - 4:15pm by Michael-IDA

I never did find a way to use Drush without composer on Backdrop.  I did find a refactored replacement that will work though.

https://forum.backdropcms.org/forum/brush-command-line-shell-and-unix-sc...

Download:

https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/brush

Unzip and setup the same way you use to:

alias brush='{path to brush folder}/brush'

Then replace brush for drush for  all your drush commands.

Best,
Michael
 

Thu, Nov 23, 2017 - 1:06pm by Wolf_22

Thanks for responding, Jen.

For anyone reading this, I'm not at all against such things as Git and or Composer, etc. I know they have their place but I believe they should always be optional aspects. So it's the "forced ideal" that I'm massively against: Forcing things like Composer, etc. onto everyone under the pitch that "it's the future" or the guise of representing "innovation" isn't something I view as accommodating.

While in some situations those things might be useful or even necessary, ultimately they boil down to one's preferences when in the context of something that is ultimately separate from them (i.e. - the CMS in question).

Sat, Nov 25, 2017 - 4:03pm by dead dred

I was excited about D8 but all that went out the window when it would not install on a shared hosting account with out shell access and some convoluted way of installing things. That was it for me for Drupal and have built lot of sites using Drupal since D5.

Thu, Nov 30, 2017 - 3:27pm by gippy

I have no trouble using composer. The problem is that composer has caused more trouble than it has solved. There are now a whole lot of sites that can't be updated from 8.3 to 8.4 because of a dependency problem with Drush 8. So, now everyone has got to go to Drush 9, which breaks all sorts of things. Someone called Drupal 8 the Windows Vista of Drupal. Like the Space Shuttle, it's a complex beast that blows up too often.