See you Drupal 7, welcome Drupal 9!

The year after next is the time!
Julia Kadauke
Drupal 7: End of Life verschoben auf November 2022

Attention "dusty"!

This article is already a little outdated and may contain information that no longer corresponds to the current status of the topic.

Drupal 7 was released back in 2011. After serving the Drupal community and its users for over 8 years, Drupal 7 was scheduled to reach its End of Life (EOL) in November 2021. At this point, it should be noted that due to the impact of COVID-19 on company budgets, the Drupal community has announced that this date will be postponed by one year: The new EOL date for Drupal 7 is therefore November 28, 2022. The EOL date for Drupal 8 is still November 2, 2021. You can find out what this means for you as a website operator in our blog article: Drupal 7 - End of life.

Drupal 9 will be released in 2020. This raises a lot of questions for users with websites based on the two soon-to-be-retired versions.

A translation of So long Drupal 7, welcome Drupal 9 by Gabriele Maira

What does Drupal End of Life mean for website operators?

If you have not yet switched to Drupal 8, now is the time! The development of Drupal 8 has consistently improved the framework and made it easier to migrate websites. Although the change from D6 / D7 to D8 is generally known, it is not easy.

As Drupal 8 is an almost complete rewrite compared to previous versions of our popular CMS, your content, code, themes and templates will need to be migrated. So there's a lot to do, but don't worry! There is plenty of documentation available as many companies and organizations have already gone through this process. In this blog post, there are some links and tips to make this task easier.

Let's start by pointing out that Drupal 8 (and Drupal 9) comes with a migration framework by default. This means that migrating content from previous versions - as well as from other systems - is a simple (and often) non-technical task.

This also applies to your code, as the community has created a dedicated page for "Converting Drupal 7 modules to Drupal 8" which covers all common scenarios and issues. We also have a few more links and tips for you to achieve a painless transition between D6 / D7 and D8.

After moving to Drupal 8 - do I have to do all this again for Drupal 9?

No!

The Drupal community has decided to stop publishing sites after each major release by introducing more detailed publishing processes and policies. For this reason, Drupal 9 code will be exactly the same as the last version of Drupal 8, but with no deprecated code removed.

This means that if you follow Drupal best practices and do not use deprecated code under Drupal 8, your site can be converted with zero development time. The same should apply to all subsequent major version updates.

What does this mean for maintainers of modules, profiles and themes?

Either you have a module (or profile or theme) hosted in Drupal.org, or you have created custom modules for your organization. You need to check if your code is compatible with Drupal 9. Otherwise, the code will no longer be used during the migration.

Below are some scenarios and best practice suggestions for website and module owners. If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

... From Drupal 6

Well, the version is already very old. We strongly recommend moving directly to Drupal 8 as soon as possible. Although moving from 8 to 9 will be easy, Drupal 8 includes migration facilities for Drupal 6 that are probably not included in Drupal 9. There is a possibility that these will be available as contrib modules, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Again, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to Drupal 8 as soon as possible!

... From Drupal 7

You have about 2.5 years to migrate to Drupal 8 or Drupal 9. However, it is strongly recommended that you start planning your migration to Drupal 8 now to ensure you have enough time to carry out the necessary work and testing.

With the release of Drupal 9 scheduled for June 2020, the decision to jump straight to D9 may leave you with just 12 months between the release and the end-of-life date of Drupal 7. In addition to the other links in this article to help you migrate code and content,"Drupal Module Upgrader" may be very useful.

If moving to D8 is really impossible for your website, there is another option to keep this version by using one of the recognized providers for long-term support. There may be additional fees to stay on these programs, but it has worked very well with D6. Check here to learn more and stay up to date.

... From Drupal 8

Very good! If you're already working with Drupal 8, you're lucky that you might be able to move to the next major version without much effort.

Since the big difference between the last D8 version and the first one for D9 is that all deprecated code is removed, you only need to check that your modules, themes and profiles do not contain any deprecated code. So you don't have to worry about migrating your content at all!

Don't worry about the code either, as the community has already created some tools and procedures to make this work easier.

For example, if you manage some contrib modules on Drupal.org, you can already test if the code is D9-ready. The task is as simple as uploading a really small patch in an issue and waiting for the testbot's results. I did this for the chatbot API module: check out"Issue" and"Results" for yourself. There are only four deprecated messages for the chatbot API, which is not bad. Almost D9-ready!

If you want to test your module's code directly, you can download and use Matt Glaman's Drupal check now. Follow the steps to download and run the tool for the modules you have created or used for your website and check if they are ready for D9.

Drupal API also shows outdated code. You can use this website to search for the error message, check the code and determine how to fix the error.

And of course, it's best to keep an eye on the Drupal change records. However, since this web page is a user interface for the actual Drupal code, you can always find the same information in your codebase files as well.

You now know what you need to change to make your website compatible, but not yet how. The messages about outdated information should always support you with helpful suggestions.

Take for example the first error in the Chatbot API:

"\ Drupal \ Component \ Utility \ Unicode :: strtolower () is deprecated in Drupal 8.6.0 and will be removed before Drupal 9.0.0. Use mb_strtolower () instead. See https://www.drupal.org/node/2850048."

It shows exactly what's going on, and the link explains the problem and reason for the change even further and gives you some examples. I just need to search my code for "Unicode :: strtolower" instances and replace it with "mb_strtolower".

Further links

Need help upgrading your Durpal 7 or Drupal 8 site? Learn more about our Drupal 9 upgrade service!

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