Feedback on Drupal Dev Days 2025

Last week, from 15 to 18 April was Drupal Dev Days 2025 in Leuven, Belgium.

The event welcomed around 310 attendees, the standard size for this event.

Here's a summary of the sessions I attended and the presentation I was able to give. I was also able to continue developing on the UI Suite ecosystem and participate in discussions.

WebAssembly beyond the browser

Very good presentation on what Webassembly is and the issues, particularly maintenance and encapsulation, that it solves.

Too many platforms (such as cars) have security holes because updates are not deployed or it is no longer possible to deploy them.

It lacked examples of Webassembly usage with Drupal to be more concrete.

Overcoming our Primitive Obsessions

Explaining primitives and the process of questioning whether typing via primitive is sufficient or whether it's better to type via objects.

The conclusion is to keep a balance between primitive and object, without it becoming an obsession and decreasing in efficiency.

Be Lazy, Update Drupal Easily in CI/CD

To integrate updates in CI/CD, 3 tools are fairly widespread:

• Renovate
• Dependabot
• Violonist

The rest of the presentation looked at Renovate, which creates merge requests automatically if Composer updates are detected.

The point of attention in the steps comes from the fact that in the proposed MR, the update on the Composer side is already applied, out for Drupal you also need to ensure that the configuration is also kept up to date. Hence the trick of:

1. reverting the code to the previous state
2. installing the project in the CI
3. reapplying the code update
4. starting Drupal updates
5. exporting and versioning configuration changes

SDC & Form API, better late than never

I was able to give my presentation in front of around fifty people.

One person was particularly interested and at his request we organised a BoF the following day to continue the discussion around the subject. As communication for the BoFs had not been planned, we were finally able to continue the discussion on the issues in the presentation only at 3.

Drupal CMS now and beyond

The target for the Drupal CMS product is now projects between €25k and €100k, enabling Drupal integrators to either reduce the cost of a project or deliver more functionality for the same cost.

It seemed to me that the aim was rather to be able to address projects under €25k, perhaps a target adjustment since the launch of Drupal CMS or perhaps I no longer had that in mind.

PHP's Type System Dissected

Superb presentation of types in PHP. First discussed from a theoretical perspective, followed by concrete examples with the borderline cases this can cause.

With a point of attention on the risk of passing variables as references and the impact this can have on the type.

Our good ol' display building is cool again

Presentation on the highlights of display building in Drupal's history and the future with UI Suite re-entering API after API in the core.

From seed to Twig: soft introduction to the Compiling Theory

Deconstructing (macro) how Twig is compiled and how to extend it at the compile level rather than via functions or filters.

Discussion

We were able to chat with Cristina Chumillas, Lauri Timmanee, Wim Leers and Pierre Dureau about styles, their definition and use in UI Suite. As well as integrating them into the Core so that it can be both one more UI Suite API that goes into the Drupal core and benefit Experience Builder.

Contribution

During the DDDs as well as the weekends around them, I was able to finish or make progress on the following UI Suite-related topics:

• UI Examples / UI Patterns
  • Better management of simplified render array syntax stories and examples
• Sobki Bootstrap
  • Ability to add background images to blocks and sections
• UI Suite Bootstrap
  • Discussion on a companion submodule
  • No attribute management via layout
  • Start creating components for form elements
• UI Patterns
  • Creating a ticket on configuration order changes on installation
  • Allowing components to be used as a field widget
• UI Styles
  • Discussion about a ui_styles_field_formatter submodule
• UI Skins
  • Review of a ticket
• Core
  • Compatibility between SDC and the Form API
  • Defining form elements from SDC

The focus having mainly been on compatibility between SDC and the Form API as well as use in widget fields via UI Patterns. 

Conclusion

Given the interest in my session and the progress made on this issue with Pierre Dureau, I've proposed it for the DrupalCon Vienna 2025 where it can be updated with the advances made over the next 6 months.

An event with advances on UI Suite and above all discussions and demos to raise awareness of UI Suite.

Thanks to the organisers, sponsors, participants and Smile for sending me there.

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/groups/14875179@N24

Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLza5NTXQjgP8DCaZEEFhp59yNl5IWjcdF