To install a Drupal distribution (or Drupal core), use one of the following:

• Composer (Recommended)
• Cloud IDE (Recommended)
• Tar or Zip file (Not recommended)

A Drupal distribution is a custom edition of Drupal, tuned and extended with custom developed and contributed modules to enable desired features. Such a distribution includes Drupal core, Drupal contributed modules, themes, libraries, and installation profiles that together provide a Drupal solution. You can install most of the popular Drupal distributions in Cloud Platform. To import a Drupal distribution to Cloud Platform, you can leverage one-click selection.

Prerequisites for installing Drupal 11¶

The following are the prerequisites for installing Drupal 11:

• PHP 8.3 is not set as the default version. Therefore, update your environments and developer tools such as Code Studio and Cloud IDE to use PHP 8.3.

• MySQL 8 is currently not available on Cloud Platform. Therefore, use the MySQL 8.0 to 5.7 backport database driver module to allow Drupal 11 to run on MySQL 5.7. For more information, see MySQL 8.0 to 5.7 backport database driver for upgrading to Drupal 11.

• If you use the mysql57 module with Cloud IDE, PHPUnit tests that use the database fail with an error stating that the database server version of 5.7 is less than the minimum required version of 8.0. To resolve this error, update the SIMPLETEST_DB environment variable to add ?module=mysql57:

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  export SIMPLETEST_DB="mysql://drupal:[email protected]/drupal?module=mysql57"

Installing a Drupal distribution through Composer¶

Prerequisites¶

Ensure that your development environment has the following:

• Composer
• Git

Steps¶

1. Clone your Acquia repository into a new folder such as ProjectName, and create a branch:

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   git clone [email protected]:Sitename.git ProjectName
   cd ProjectName
   git checkout -b MyBranchName

2. Create composer.json and composer.lock files:

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   composer create-project --no-install drupal/recommended-project .

   Ensure that you include the dot at the end of the command.

3. Modify the composer.json file by replacing web with docroot. Use your preferred editor or run the following command:

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   sed -i'.original' 's/web\//docroot\//g' composer.json

4. Run the following command to install the latest version of Drush in your codebase:

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   composer require drush/drush --no-update

5. Complete the following optional steps based on your requirement:

   1. Add asset-packagist.org as another repository to provide access to supplement packages.drupal.org and additional packages:

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      composer config repositories.1 composer https://asset-packagist.org

   2. Configure the location and name of the vendor directory:

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      composer config vendor-dir vendor

   3. Select your preferred installation type from the following options:
      • source
      • dist

      • auto

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        composer config preferred-install dist

   4. Add the following useful future project patches:

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      composer require cweagans/composer-patches --no-update

   5. To add a patch to core or a module, include the following lines in the extra section in your composer.json file for future patches:

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      {
       "enable-patching": true,
       "patches": {
         "drupal/[module_name]": {
           "Note regarding the nature of the patch being applied": "https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/[patch_name].patch"
         }
       }
      }

      For more information, see Patching with Composer.

   6. Configure Composer to continue if a patch fails:

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      composer config extra.composer-exit-on-patch-failure false

   7. To remove .git folders after each update to ensure that git tracks all files, include the following lines after the extra section in your composer.json file:

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      {
       "scripts": {
         "post-install-cmd": [
           "find docroot vendor -name '.git' | xargs rm -rf",
           "find docroot vendor -name '.github' | xargs rm -rf"
         ],
         "post-update-cmd": [
           "find docroot vendor -name '.git' | xargs rm -rf",
           "find docroot vendor -name '.github' | xargs rm -rf"
         ]
       }
      }

6. Run the following command to install all dependencies:

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   composer update --lock

   Composer performs the following:

   • Creates a Drupal project
   • Ensures that Drupal uses a directory structure that Acquia recommends
   • Adds the latest version of Drush as a required dependency

7. Copy default.settings.php to the settings.php file to add your database connection.

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   cp docroot/sites/default/default.settings.php docroot/sites/default/settings.php

   For instructions about modifying the settings.php file, see Acquia require line.

8. Add the following to your settings.php file for configuration management:

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   $settings["config_sync_directory"] = $app_root . '/../config/' . basename($site_path);

9. Add and commit your code:

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   git add .
   git commit -m "Initial commit of new Drupal core site."

10. Run the following command to push your changes to the Acquia repository and create a tracking branch on the remote repository:

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    git push --set-upstream origin MyBranchName

11. Navigate to your Cloud Platform application, and switch the code to your branch on your preferred testing environment.
12. Set your Cloud Platform environment to use the latest PHP version.
13. If your environment contains an existing database that one of your Drupal websites uses, Acquia recommends you to perform the following:
    • Perform a database backup.
    • Download your Cloud Platform Drush aliases.

    • Use Drush to drop the database on your Cloud Platform environment so that you have a clean database for your Drupal site install:

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      ../vendor/bin/drush @my.alias sql-drop

14. Click the link in the Cloud Platform user interface to access the URL of the Cloud Platform environment, and proceed to /core/install.php.
15. Follow the prompts on your website to complete the installation process.

Installing a Drupal distribution in a Cloud IDE¶

Cloud IDE also offers a convenient and opinionated way to install Drupal.

To install a Drupal distribution using a Cloud IDE:
 

1. Launch your Cloud IDE. If you have not yet created a Cloud IDE, follow the instructions on Getting started with Cloud IDE.

2. From the IDE Get Started page, click CREATE A NEW APPLICATION.

   

   A terminal pane pops up and prompts you to install the Acquia Drupal recommended project or the Acquia Drupal minimal project.

3. Select your target version by typing the number associated with your distribution selection in the terminal prompt and press Enter. Acquia CLI takes care of automatic installation of Drupal in Cloud IDE’s /home/ide/project directory.

   

   After Drupal is installed, you can start developing or push from the IDE terminal to Cloud Platform with acli push:db and acli push:files. As a best practice, your codebase remains to be managed with Git.

Downloading Drupal distribution manually and deploying to Cloud Platform¶

To install a Drupal distribution on Cloud Platform, you can download a Cloud Platform compatible .tar or .zip file of the latest Drupal release and complete the following steps:

1. Decompress the downloaded archive into the docroot directory of your Acquia Git repository.
2. Add a settings.php file and update it by following the instructions on Acquia require line.
3. Commit and push your changes to Cloud Platform using Git.
4. Set your Cloud Platform environment to use PHP 7.4 or later.
5. If your environment has an existing database that was used by one of your Drupal websites before, Acquia recommends you to:
   1. Perform a database backup
   2. Download your Cloud Platform drush aliases

   3. Use Drush to drop the database on your Cloud Platform environment (replace @my.alias with the appropriate alias for your application and environment) as displayed in the following example:

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      ./vendor/bin/drush @my.alias sql-drop

      This ensures you have a clean database for your Drupal install.

6. Click the link in the Cloud Platform user interface to access the URL for the Cloud Platform environment and proceed to /core/install.php.
7. Follow the prompts on your website to complete the installation process.

Related topics¶

• Creating a new application