Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Problem/Motivation
The Address module requires PHP libraries that must be managed using Composer.
Address is:
- Installed on ~4% of reporting Drupal 8 sites.
- One of the top 25 Drupal 8 modules by usage, with usage increasing at a greater rate than that of core.
- A frequently reported source of install and update issues. Example: #2768413: Upgrade to 8.1.7 breaks site because of address / composer installed module.
- Used in some Drupal distributions. Example: Open Social. Significant barriers remain before the drupal.org packaging infrastructure could support Composer based packaging. See #2485011: Infrastructure Requirements to support Composer based workflows, #2477789: Use composer to build sites. Therefore, any distribution using Address cannot be packaged on drupal.org.
Proposed resolution
Establish criteria for contrib module dependency inclusion in core. Candidate criteria:
- Module is installed on >4% of Drupal sites in the given major version.
As first step, include the Address dependencies in core.
This is only a workaround and will not address all sources of issues and barriers related to Composer-based workflows. However, it should improve site builders experiences in many cases and also remove a significant barrier to hosting distributions on drupal.org.
Comments
Comment #2
nedjoUpdating summary.
Comment #3
bojanz commentedWe can put a thousand contrib libraries in core, but it won't change the fact that Composer is here to stay.
And sure, we need to fix distribution packaging on d.o. Thanks to Mixologic and the DA I believe most of the blockers to doing that are now fixed (Composer endpoint, testbot support, etc). All D8 distributions (Lightning, Open Social, Commerce Base) recommend installation via Composer, and only Lightning is actually downloadable from d.o.
Comment #4
nedjoAgreed. But we don't (yet!) expect Drupal users to build core using Composer. Based on analysis of download stats, Misologic suggests in #2477789-131: Use composer to build sites that:
The interim measure I'm suggesting in this issue is intended to help the significant number of users who might have a use for Address but for whom the requirement of managing their code base through Composer is a major barrier.
From looking at the relevant issues, it looks like there may be significant work outstanding. #2485011: Infrastructure Requirements to support Composer based workflows hasn't been updated in most of a year. Recent comments suggest #2477789: Use composer to build sites may be pushed to the ideas queue or postponed until Drupal 9.
Comment #15
quietone commented@nedjo, Thank you for the idea.
The particular proposal doesn't met the Criteria for evaluating proposed changes. In this case, there is not demonstrated demand and support for the change. There for closing as won't fix.
There is ongoing work to improve the composer based workflow in #2940733: Site Builder Tool/Project Browser initiative which may be of interest to anyone following this issue.
Cheers