General

• 1: Overview
• 2: Installation
• 3: Update Process
• 4: Releases
• 5: Resources
• 6: Roadmap

1 - Overview

The Drupal WxT distribution is designed for organizations that must meet accessibility and bilingualism standards. It attempts to integrate with the design patterns found in the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system, including the mandatory Content and Information Architecture (C&IA) Specification for the Government of Canada.

To make working with Drupal WxT easier, there are potentially three ways you can approach it.

Distribution

The Drupal WxT distribution method stands out as a preferred choice for web developers and organizations seeking a robust web development solution.

Unlike a standalone installation, the distribution provides a comprehensive package of features and workflows that have been vetted and tested by the Drupal WxT community based on real world use cases.

This means users can leverage a well-established framework with proven capabilities, saving time and effort in development while ensuring stability and reliability.

By opting for the distribution method, teams gain access to shared resources, ongoing support, and a community-driven ecosystem, hopefully helping to build accessible, and bilingual web experiences with confidence.

Benefits

• Many canadian departments and organizations have contributed features and improvements
• Has received several security and accessibility audits to the codebase and markup
• Will stay on top of security releases within a maximum of 72 hours of posting
• Creation of many plugins in order to more fully integrate with the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system
• Best effort open source support from a community of developers
• Provides upgrade paths for all supported components
• Additional functionality is provided by WxT Extend modules which target a specific feature
• Stays on top of performance related issues taking into account both MySQL and PostgreSQL

Components

Standalone Installation

A standalone installation allows you to install and configure the standalone components type discussed in the previous section separately without relying on a pre-packaged distribution (composer project).

A composer project will often include multiple modules whether both custom and contributed along with the various configuration and dependencies they will rely on.

Drupal WxT offers a standalone installation as an alternative for those users who don’t want the full weight of a distribution and prefer more control over their setup while still conforming to the Government of Canada C&IA Specification.

Instead users can opt to create their own distribution (composer project) and install only the specific modules and themes required for their needs.

At a minimum and to comply with the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system you only need use 2 components.

Benefits

• Can still conform to the Government of Canada C&IA Specification
• Numerous accessibility audits to help improve markup and content information architecture
• Integrates tightly with the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system
• Best effort open source support with a community of developers
• Provides upgrade paths for all supported components

Components

For the WET-BOEW Framework Assets it is mandatory that you follow the expected naming convention and that these files be placed within the /libraries folder.

For you convenience all of these components are already part of a composer repository that can be added very easily to your new or existing composer project.

{
    ...
    "require": {
        ...
        "drupal/wxt_bootstrap": "^8.0",
        "drupal/wxt_library": "^8.0",
    },
    ...
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "https://drupalwxt.github.io/composer-extdeps/"
        }
    ],
    ...
}

Note: It is still recommended to use the distribution method, as the standalone option receives limited support and you will lose out on some of the functionality / plugins that help to more fully integrate with the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system.

Leverage as a Reference Implementation

If you prefer full control over your codebase and want to reduce external dependencies, you can use Drupal WxT as a reference implementation.

This means that, as long as you provide proper attribution, you have the freedom to copy or fork any part of the codebase and incorporate it into your own project.

The main drawback of this approach is that you won’t receive community support and also won’t have the same tight integration of features with the WET-BOEW and Canada.ca design system.

However you can selectively choose exactly what you need for your project, potentially saving some time and reducing additional external dependencies.

Our advice at the end of the day is you must consider what is best for your department or organization in the long term.

2 - Installation

We highly recommend using our Composer Project Template to build and maintain your WxT derived project’s codebase.

Server Requirements

As Drupal WxT is a Drupal distribution, the official guide for Drupal system requirements will apply.

Installation

• Composer Download
• Tarball Download
• Site Installation
• Standalone Installation
• Default Content via Migrate

Composer Download

Run the following commands (choosing your version) and replace site-name with the directory of your choice this is where WxT will be installed.

# Requires PHP 8.1
composer self-update
composer create-project drupalwxt/site-wxt:10.1.x-dev <site-name> --no-interaction

# Requires PHP 8.2
composer self-update
composer create-project drupalwxt/site-wxt:10.2.x-dev <site-name> --no-interaction

Note: Normally you would pass a stable tag to the above command rather then just pulling from the development branch.

Tarball Download

If you don’t want to use Composer, you can install WxT the traditional way by downloading a tarball from WxT’s GitHub releases page.

Note: That the tarball generated by the Drupal.org packager does not include the required Composer dependencies and should not be used without following the specialized instructions.

Containers

For the (optional) container based local development workflow please consult our documentation site:

• Containers

Site Installation

a) The Drupal Root is in <site-name>/html

b) You can install Drupal WxT through the browser as any other drupal installation or use drush site-install to install the WxT installation profile:

drush si wxt \
  --sites-subdir=default \
  --db-url=mysql://root:root@db:3306/wxt \
  --account-name=admin \
  --account-pass=Drupal@2024 \
  --site-mail=admin@example.com \
  --site-name="Drupal Install Profile (WxT)" \
  wxt_extension_configure_form.select_all='TRUE' \
  install_configure_form.update_status_module='array(FALSE,FALSE)' \
  --yes

Note: If you wish to only install the minimum set of dependencies please remove the wxt_extension_configure_form.select_all='TRUE' flag in its entirety.

c) You can download up-to-date translations using:

drush locale-check
drush locale-update

d) If you work for the Government of Canada you will want to enable the canada.ca theme:

drush config-set wxt_library.settings wxt.theme theme-gcweb -y

Note: You can navigate to the admin/config/wxt/wxt_library settings page.

e) The Drupal WxT site should now be sucessfully installed and you can loging via the /user page.

Note: Please always go to the admin/report/status page and confirm there are no warnings and / or errors.

Standalone Installation

The standalone install is provided as an additional method for those who do not wish to have the full weight of a distribution and its required dependencies. You will need to add at the minimum the below listed modules and themes (including Bootstrap base theme) as well as the WxT jQuery Framework assets installed into the /libraries folder with the proper naming scheme.

• WxT Bootstrap
• WxT Library
• WxT jQuery Framework assets

Note: We highly recommend that you use the distribution method as limited support is provided for the standalone method.

Default Content via Migrate

The following is an example of how to use the Migrate API module to import common design patterns for Canada.ca aligning to the C&IA specifications:

# Set the WxT theme to GCWeb
drush config-set wxt_library.settings wxt.theme theme-gcweb -y

# Import design patterns for Canada.ca
drush migrate:import --group wxt --tag 'Core'
drush migrate:import --group gcweb --tag 'Core'
drush migrate:import --group gcweb --tag 'Menu'

drush cr

Note: There is a corresponding group wxt_translation and gcweb_translation for importing the corresponding french content.

3 - Update Process

Drupal WxT relies on Drupal’s configuration system for configuring default features and functionality. A consequence of this is, once you have installed Drupal WxT, that we cannot modify the sites configuration without having an impact on your site. Drupal WxT will, however, offer to make changes to your configuration as part of the update process.

If you’ve installed WxT using our Composer-based project template, all you need to do is following the given steps below.

Update Process

These are the typical steps you should following when updating Drupal WxT:

a) Read the release notes for the release to which you are updating along with any releases in between.

b) To update your WxT codebase you would replace [VERSION] with the release version you wish to use.

composer self update
composer require drupalwxt/wxt:[VERSION]
composer update

Note: We highly recommend that you are using the v2.x.x line of Composer.

c) Run any database updates:

drush cache:rebuild
drush updatedb

Note: You may instead go to /admin/config/development/performance to clear caches and /update.php to run database updates.

d) Run any WxT configuration updates:

drush cache:rebuild
drush update:wxt

Note: You may instead go to /admin/config/development/performance to clear caches and /update.php to run WxT updates.

Configuration Management

If you are using configuration management to move your configuration between development, staging, and production environments, you should follow the standard Drupal process.

a) Export the new configuration:

drush cache:rebuild
drush config:export

b) Commit the code and configuration changes to your source code repository and push them to your environment.

c) Import any configuration changes:

drush cache:rebuild
drush config:import

4 - Releases

Releases of Drupal WxT

The following table is a list of all the releases that are housed under the Drupal WxT organization on GitHub:

Repositories for Drupal WxT

The following table is a list of all the repositories that are housed under the Drupal WxT organization on GitHub:

5 - Resources

The following are links to some useful resources:

General

• Documentation Website
• CHANGELOG
• RELEASES
• Issue Queue

Drupal

• Installation Profile
• Composer Project Template
• Composer Project Example

Advanced

• Helm Chart for Kubernetes
• Containers
• Containers Scaffold

6 - Roadmap

The core distribution will always strive to be:

• As minimal as possible on top of Drupal Core providing performance, scalability, and security features on top of it
• Provide best practices for users to follow which includes our Composer workflow, CI / CD methodologies, and deployment strategies
• Provide a place for all Government Departments to inherit the base requirements such as Language Handling, GC Approved Themes, and other functionalities such as Date Format, Metadata Output, and Accessibility improvements

Beyond the above the distribution will provide extensible features that can be opted into through the wxt_ext suite of modules:

• Each of these modules must explicitly state all of there contributed dependencies
• Governance around these “extension” modules can be a bit looser
• These modules should be clear in focus and not try to do to much other then an immediate task at hand
• These modules should have an modulename.wxt_extension.yml file so can be enabled as optional extension during profile installation

In addition, Drupal WxT will offer out of tree (external) modules that implement specific features:

• These features are not included by the core platform because they are only used by a subset of users
• These modules may be subject to change though update hooks will always be provided
• Community supported modules will also be listed in our README of additional modules but will not be supported by the Drupal WxT team

Note: The governance around the core distribution will always be much stricter then the governance around adding a wxt_ext or an out of tree module.