Problem/Motivation
Parsing .info files for dependency information is already implemented on the modules administration page. Adding support for the same dependencies in theme.info files, and implementing the same behavior on the admin/build/themes page, would allow designers building heavily customized themes to make safer assumptions about their target sites.
A theme might require the existence of imagecache to auto-generate variations of a header image. This would be a nice compromise between systems like Wordpress and Joomla!, which give themes much greater control over the functionality of the site, and Drupal's module-centric approach.
It also creates following new UX requirements and non UI, API requirements
- Represent the list of dependent modules in themes list page. Display of missing/disabled dependent modules.
- Extension in Drush to download and enable modules dependent on themse.
Proposed resolution
- Allow themes to add the dependencies to
.info.ymlfiles - Show these dependencies on /admin/appearance and make it impossible to install without the requirements
- Install dependencies automatically on API level.
Original report by [eaton]
Issue Summary
Parsing .info files for dependency information is already implemented on the modules administration page. Adding support for the same dependencies in theme.info files, and implementing the same behavior on the admin/build/themes page, would allow designers building heavily customized themes to make safer assumptions about their target sites.
A theme might require the existence of imagecache to auto-generate variations of a header image. This would be a nice compromise between systems like Wordpress and Joomla!, which give themes much greater control over the functionality of the site, and Drupal's module-centric approach.