Problem/Motivation
This came out of a discussion with @catch, @lauriii, @gabor hojtsy, @pameeela, @xjm, @wim leers, @phenaproxima, @timplunkett, @pdureau, @ckrina (and others who I may have temporarily forgotten who was at which meeting) at DrupalCon Vienna.
Drupal core provides multiple layout tools:
- Theme regions with blocks. See #3555047: Add a way to ship block placement statically (will be useful when block UI is removed)
- Manage display for entity fields. See #3564234: Add display-builder agnostic overview page for display modes where we improved this already.
- Layout Builder
Neither are actively being developed further, they are in maintenance mode mostly in core. The contributed module space is concentrating around building on top of SDC components with Drupal Canvas, Display Builder and other solutions instead to place entity fields, replace/avoid theme regions entirely and sidestep Layout Builder. Neither of those solutions are quite ready yet for core inclusion but given the core layout solutions not being built further this results in a confusing situation for Drupal builders.
Drupal core only used Layout Builder in 2 places: the Umami demo and Navigation's layout.
The UX for editing navigation's layout is by far not up to Drupal standards and is being decoupled in #3521159: Add Navigation Layout module to remove dependency on Layout Builder and then planned to be removed from core. Umami has already been hidden from the Drupal installer as it is not demonstrating Drupal's capabilities representatively anymore. It is now only used for performance testing as a "real scenario". It was built before Layout Builder and already has an MR to restore it to pre-layout builder glory by keeping everything visually exactly intact.
Drupal CMS uses Drupal Canvas extensively and only uses Layout Builder for the Dashboard which is itself also being decoupled.
This matches with the efforts outlined in #3533198: [Meta] Make Drupal the first "design-system native" CMS + Unify & simplify render & theme systems too.
Steps to reproduce
N/A.
Proposed resolution
Deprecate and remove Layout Builder from core.
Remaining tasks
Obtain core leadership signoffs.
User interface changes
Layout builder will not be included in core anymore. It will still be available as a contributed project.
Introduced terminology
None.
API changes
None.
Data model changes
None.
Release notes snippet
None. (This is a policy issue, actual implementation will be separate).
Comments
Comment #2
gábor hojtsyComment #3
gábor hojtsyComment #4
catchWhile there's no plans to put an alternative display builder into core at the moment, there is #3533198: [Meta] Make Drupal the first "design-system native" CMS + Unify & simplify render & theme systems which is putting the plumbing into core and is ongoing.
Comment #5
quietone commentedComment #6
gábor hojtsyAdded link to larger plan to issue summary and issues where manage display was already made more flexible. Umami also has a green MR now which is visually identical to the LB version, 600 lines less code and no LB is used also linking that. Other modules only have glue code / optional integrations with LB.
Comment #7
gábor hojtsyComment #8
quietone commented