We are diehard fans of Omega 3, using it on our main, giant site; and we are looking for to the performance features of Omega 4.

We are very interested in simply upgrading our theme from Omega 3 to 4. Is there an upgrade path? Or is it simply a matter of using the 4 code in place of 3? Or can it just be done with some find and replaces to match whatever new markup has been implemented in v4 to replace of v3's markup?

Or are v3 users expected to start over again if they want to use v4 for their theme?

I have searched the various discussions and blog posts about v4, but I haven't found any mention of an upgrade path. Have I just missed it, or are we out of luck?

Comments

msmithcti’s picture

msmithcti CreditAttribution: msmithcti commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Omega 4.x is a complete rewrite of Omega 3.x and to allow for the large scale changes, backwards compatibility isn't something that has been possible. As to how easy it would be to upgrade, it is largely dependent on the subtheme, but I would expect quite a bit of find and replace for class names along with some work to convert layouts defined in Omega 3 to Omega 4 layouts. I would also be wary of any theme settings that may be stored by Omega 3 that could cause problems in Omega 4.

Good luck!

somatics’s picture

somatics CreditAttribution: somatics commented

Well, that's disappointing to hear, but I appreciate the quick response and explanation.

Can you help me with a little more insight? Since I have to build the theme from scratch in v4, I'm wondering if I can get a jump on it an start now? In other words, even though it's in beta at this time, is Omega 4 stable enough that if I build a sub-theme in it now, will updates to Omega 4 break a sub-theme already built in 4 -- or are they likely to just fix bugs in the Omega 4 code and keep our sub theme intact?

fubhy’s picture

fubhy CreditAttribution: fubhy commented
Version: 7.x-4.0-beta3 » 7.x-4.x-dev

We are 100% at a bug-fixing stage. We won't break backwards compatibility at this point. If there are new feature additions they will be minor and not affect development.

There are quite a few Omega 4 driven sites in production already:

http://www.sonova.com/
http://thevoice.srf.ch/
http://hofratsuess.ch/
http://www.fidesbusinesspartner.ch/
http://www.xalps.ch/

Those are all examples developed by @amazeelabs only.

Usually I suggest going with the latest dev version even as that contains the latest bug fixes too. We will release one more beta before going into RC and then, eventually, a full release. So, yes.. At this point I think it's safe to start working with 4.x

As @splatio already said there is no click&done upgrade path solution for migrating from 3.x to 4.x as 4.x is a complete re-write and we don't really have any solutions for upgrading themes in Drupal - That's basically a module thing as upgrading themes is more or less an edge case since it mostly comes down to putting together a completely new theme anyways.

Anyways... Upgrading basically consists of two parts: We don't have a UI for assembling the output/layout of the page template in the backend anymore. So the first step would be to convert the layout configuration into a proper html and css (Sass) driven page.tpl layout. So instead of configuring that you would build a proper page.tpl.php and write the CSS accordingly. I mostly use Susy as my grid framework of choice but with 4.x you are free to use other frameworks too (singularitygs, zen grids, etc.). Once the layout has been converted you will have to convert your 3.x CSS step by step taking into consideration the changed new class names/syntax we use in 4.x.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

FareThoughts’s picture

FareThoughts CreditAttribution: FareThoughts commented

On a similar note, I have a subtheme that was built in 3, and my site wanted me to update the Omega theme, which I just did and completely broke the site. (I fixed it easily enough by deleting the new Omega theme and replacing it with the last build of 3 and running update.php.)

Going forward, however, does that mean that I should no longer update core Drupal if I'm not planning to update my subtheme to 4? I don't want to start over again on this site's appearance, but I do want to make sure that it's both secure and compatible going forward.

Thank you.

Tran’s picture

Tran CreditAttribution: Tran commented
Issue summary: View changes

So, I built my site with an Omega-3 subtheme.
I no-longer use the theme.
I'd like to see what Omega 4's all about. But I worry that dumping Omega 3 and Omega tools might ruin some of the contexts that are critical to my site. Should I be worried about uninstalling all by Omega 3 remnants?
And if I can do so successfully, can I install Omega 4?