Lightning is a packaged distribution of the open source Drupal social publishing system for Drupal 8. As a free collection of useful modules from Acquia and the Drupal community, Lightning offers you a quick on-ramp to begin building your website.
Lightning for Drupal 8
In Drupal 8, we have taken advantage of new D8 functionality and tightly coupled functional areas that comprise the new standard for enterprise authoring in Drupal, including layout, preview, workflow, and media. We have embedded hundreds of automated tests allowing developers to implement continuous integration pipelines that monitor major functionality, providing a safe environment to innovate with their own custom code additions to Lightning.
Development and Maintenance
Other Drupal installations and distributions often rely on Drush for updates and development. For Lightning's Composer-based system, you will need to use Composer commands with your installation. This table shows the Composer commands that replace the Drush commands you may already be familiar with.
| Task | Drush | Composer |
|---|---|---|
| Fetch the latest version of a project | drush pm-download [project] |
composer require drupal/[project]:8.* |
| Fetch a specific version of a project | drush pm-download [project]-8.x-1.0-beta3 |
composer require drupal/[project]:8.1.0-beta3 |
| Update all projects and Drupal core | drush pm-update |
composer update |
| Update a single project | drush pm-update [project] |
composer update drupal/[project] |
| Updating Drupal core | drush pm-update drupal |
composer update drupal/core |
Composer, unlike Drush, is a dependency manager. If the module moduleA-8.x-1.0 depends on moduleB-8.x-3.2, Composer will not let you update moduleB-8.x-3.2 to 8.x-3.3 or downgrade it to 8.x-3.1. Drush has no concept of dependency management. Composer's dependency management system prevents module mismatches, ensuring system reliability.
Tasks such as database updates (drush updatedb) are still handled by Drush. This installer will install a copy of Drush (local to the project) in the bin directory.
Source Control
If you review the .gitignore file provided in the distribution, you'll see that certain directories, including all directories containing contributed projects, are excluded from source control. This might be disconcerting if you're used to Drush, but in a Composer-based project, you should not commit your installed dependencies to source control.
When you set up the project, Composer will create a file called composer.lock, which lists which dependencies were installed, and which versions. Commit the composer.lock file to source control. When others want to install copies of the project, they simply need to run composer install, which will install the correct versions of everything listed in composer.lock. This ensures a consistent base development environment for all the members of a team.
Use the information on these pages as a guide as you install or upgrade to Lightning, connect your website to an Acquia subscription, and get introduced to Acquia's technical support and network services.
Getting started with Lightning
To start taking advantage of Lightning, select one of the following links:
Still need assistance? 