How long will 7.x-5.x be supported? [#2733503]

Now that 7.x-6.x is out and is somewhat different than previous versions, I've looked at it and, well, sort of ran away back to my 7.x-5.x version. I was having trouble finding the things I'm used to seeing in this theme. So I'm wondering if it would be a bad decision to use the 5.x version or not. I'm concerned about the life of my sites. I don't want to use a version of Zen that will be outdated and not upgradable. Any thoughts on this? Anybody?

Comments

Comment #1

25 May 2016 at 15:24

ricksta created an issue. See original summary.

Comment #2

tstermitz

Colorado

CreditAttribution: tstermitz commented 25 May 2016 at 22:08

Yes. Version 6 is quite a bit different. Try it, you'll like it... for a number of reasons. More modern, modular SCSS code, for one.

In terms of long-term viability, you'll be better off with the new version,. This is the version being updated to Drupal 8.

Comment #3

ricksta CreditAttribution: ricksta commented 26 May 2016 at 14:44

Thank you, sir! I'm looking around the newer version. It's going to take some getting used to, to get my head around the component way of thinking. Also I've figured out the grids and I see I can add my own partials anyway. I'll give it a try.

Comment #4

JohnAlbin

he/they/他

English

Taipei, Taiwan

CreditAttribution: JohnAlbin for ImageX commented 31 May 2016 at 08:29

All Drupal 7 versions of Zen will be supported while Drupal 7 is supported. Note that 7.x-3.x is still listed as "supported".

The 7.x-5.x branch is in "bug or security fix only" mode. No new features.

I don't want to use a version of Zen that will be outdated and not upgradable.

Unfortunately, no themes have ever been "upgrade-able". Each version of Drupal core includes different class names, different HTML, and different theme hooks, which means that the "APIs" that themes use are always different. You can't just drop a D6 theme in D7 and expect it to work without doing a lot of work to upgrade to the new system.

The old way we built themes (and the way that Zen 7.x-5.x does it) is to hard-code those specific class names and HTML into our CSS selectors. That meant a major re-write every time you try to upgrade to a newer Drupal or a newer Zen base theme. Given the amount of investment of time you would need to do an upgrade, I've always advocated that you should just opt for a new design and (therefore) do a completely new theme instead of trying to "upgrade".

With component-based CSS, you define the class names and it becomes much, much easier to do an upgrade. You don't have to touch the CSS very much. You just need to figure out how to insert the class names into Drupal's markup. Zen 7.x-6.x is the first version of Zen where I would actually consider doing an upgrade to Drupal 8 instead of a re-write.

Zen 8.x-7.x will build further upon that idea. Not only is the CSS component-based, but the HTML and JS are now component-based. You "wire up" Drupal variables from theme hooks and push them into your components which contain HTML, CSS and JS. To upgrade to a new version of Drupal, you would just copy all of the components over and re-wire the variables.