Content moderation widget cannot be reordered

It was decided during UX review that the moderation state widget should appear in the footer region, replacing the publishing status checkbox.

Maybe instead we should change ->setDisplayConfigurable('form', TRUE) to ->setDisplayConfigurable('form', FALSE) in \Drupal\content_moderation\EntityTypeInfo::entityBaseFieldInfo. Making it impossible to reorder the content moderation widget.

After ->setDisplayConfigurable('form', TRUE) and removing the field from the form I see the following error.

Notice: Undefined index: widget in Drupal\content_moderation\EntityTypeInfo->formAlter() (line 357 of core/modules/content_moderation/src/EntityTypeInfo.php).

@jibran - @sam152 has a patch for that somewhere.

#2914839: The current moderation state in the "meta" region on content entity forms is coupled to the moderation_state field widget.

AFAICT this exact bug was already reported exactly one year earlier: #2829265: The weight of moderation_state field is not changeable …

Reroll after #2914839: The current moderation state in the "meta" region on content entity forms is coupled to the moderation_state field widget..

This element behaves the same as the published field, and it was moved there to provide a good UX by default, because this allowed us to make sure it remains close to the save button and separate it from the rest of the form with a vertical line.

I understand that this doesn't work for everyone, but was done like that based on the input of the usability team. I don't think this patch has a chance to be committed* in its current form, it might be an improvement for some but it will also be a regression for at least as many other sites.

If you don't like it there then you could for now implement a form alter or someone could create a contrib module that would do that for the time being.

I think a more realistic way to make everyone happy is to try and use the layout_builder module also for the form display and not just the view display and move all those special cases (including all the vertical tabs and so on) into configuration instead of code. This field is just one example of many that have existing hardcoded assumptions about the layout: The revision checkbox + log message, the path module, comment settings and so on. Many of those don't work for everyone, especially for forms that are not using the administration theme (layout per-theme does introduce another layer of complexity to layout builder that I think it currently can't handle though..)

* That is my personal opinion.

@Berdir +1 to that.

There was a lot of work and discussions gone into the "footer" part of the content entity form and how the publishing status and moderation state would use it.

We at least need to bring in the UX team here again.

I did suggest in #3 we should prevent the reordering of the moderation state field, much like we do with the publishing status field. Wouldn't this stop all the discussion?

implement a form alter

Yeah, this gives me more control. Let's won't fix this.