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Session Log: Sprint 2 Workstream A — shanti_sarvaka base theme, group-driven header/menu fixes

Date: 2026-08-31 Participants: Than Grove (in a live group session with the rest of the team), Claude Code Outcome: Closed all six of Workstream A's original backlog items (A1–A6) plus substantial follow-up work the group surfaced live in session. Opened PR #169, 16 commits, not yet merged — group visual sign-off on the live DDEV instance is the remaining step.

1. Session start: security-advisory block, cleared as a team decision

Before any theme work could begin, composer require drupal/bootstrap5 hit a project-wide block: Composer's audit feature rejected nearly the entire dependency tree (drupal/core itself at 11.3.11, plus group, paragraphs, search_api, simplesamlphp_auth, and others) as affected by security advisories reaching past the currently-locked versions — not a bootstrap5-specific conflict. Flagged to the group rather than forced through unilaterally; the team's live call was to run a full composer update --with-all-dependencies, bumping drupal/core to 11.4.5 and contrib alongside it. Verified clean in DDEV (composer install, drush updb, drush config:import, cache:rebuild all succeeded, no new watchdog errors) before proceeding. Commit 9796e30.

2. Workstream A1–A4: theme skeleton (mob-build, as scoped)

  • A1: shanti_sarvaka scaffolded as a Bootstrap 5 subtheme, the 12 D7 regions declared verbatim, no additions — verified via system_region_list().
  • A2: Twig templates (html, page, node, page--403, page--404, breadcrumb) ported from the real D7 .tpl.php files, translated to BS5 grid/utility classes.
  • A3: shanti_sarvaka.libraries.yml — wookmark/jssor/hammer/mCustomScrollbar vendored as-is (no Bootstrap-version dependency), bootstrap-select replaced with Tom Select 2.x (no official BS5 build exists for the original).
  • A4: preprocess hooks for breadcrumb and search-result, plus the KMaps typeahead theme-hook registration — scoped to exactly what the backlog line named, not the full page-level site-identity variable set (shanti_site, mandala_home, banner styling), which stayed explicitly deferred.

Commits cdc1f7b, 9814b76, 3b1db7c, 1b281a7.

3. A7 (added mid-session): block placement + a real D11-vs-D7 bug

Not one of the original six backlog items — added when the group looked at the live DDEV site and found it had no visible banner, footer, or title. Two causes, both real:

  1. Block placement: drush theme:enable had auto-cloned bootstrap5's default block layout into regions that don't exist in shanti_sarvaka's 12-region set, dumping almost everything into header unsorted. Placed the real blocks into the correct regions.
  2. A2 template bug: page.html.twig had assumed D7's template_preprocess_page() variable set (title, site_name, breadcrumb, tabs as bare variables) carries over to D11. It doesn't — ThemePreprocess::preprocessPage() never sets those; they only exist in preprocessMaintenancePage() for maintenance/install pages with no blocks available. Fixed to render page.header/page.banner instead.

Commit cfcec00.

4. facets module installed (live team decision)

Raised as an open question (no ADR or deferred note had actually decided whether D11 needs the facets module), then decided live by the group mid-session: install it now. Scope: module install + enable only, 82da31b — wiring an actual facet source to the kmassets index is separate follow-up work, not done here.

5. A8 (added mid-session): the theme didn't look like the site

Than compared the DDEV instance directly against images.mandala.library.virginia.edu and found they looked nothing alike — correct diagnosis: A1–A4/A7 only ported structural markup and block placement, never D7's actual visual identity. Ported shanti-main.css and five sibling stylesheets, the shanticon icon font, and the Museosans webfont verbatim, then rebuilt the Mandala icon+wordmark header lockup. Commit 211c085.

Also pulled the current production Drupal tag (7.x-1.43.10) into the local D7 reference checkout mid-session and diffed it against the branch previously used for research — confirmed zero difference in the theme directory, so no rework was needed from the earlier reads.

6. Six rounds of group-driven header/menu fixes

What followed was iterative, screenshot-driven correction against the real production site, each round verified live in Chrome (not just visual inspection — computed getBoundingClientRect()/elementFromPoint() checks caught more than one case where a screenshot looked wrong but the actual DOM state was correct, and one case where it was a real bug):

  • Left-justification, working Explore/hamburger, gold banner, "Explore {title}" (d47a4cc): traced the gold accent (#ad8a28) and the "Explore" title prefix to real, confirmed production CSS/HTML (including checking a 404 page) rather than guessing; found D11 uses .path-frontpage where D7's CSS keyed off .front.
  • Hamburger rebuilt as native Bootstrap 5 Offcanvas (d75bc5e): D7's multilevelpushmenu jQuery plugin was never ported; confirmed with the group it isn't part of Bootstrap, then rebuilt the same right-docked/compact panel natively per their direction.
  • Explore trigger corrected (49667be): Than's direct correction — Explore is not hidden on desktop and is not part of the hamburger's drilldown; it's its own persistent block sitting next to the hamburger. Moved out of the offcanvas.
  • Alignment + full-width Explore panel (486a470): Explore/hamburger height mismatch and a broken (non-full-width, badly-positioned close button) Explore panel, both fixed against computed geometry.
  • Real drilldown menu structure (d0b149c): added real parent+child test content (Collections → All Collections, matching production's actual menu, sourced from explore_menu's own shanti-collections.json) and found bootstrap5 ships a more specific menu--main.html.twig that had been silently winning over the theme's own override.
  • Compact rows, no scroll, no bleed-through (2c667d8), whitespace/Back-size (4503070), hover contrast (fcefa97): iterative sizing/spacing/color fixes against a reference screenshot Than provided, plus a real stacking-context bug (submenu not fully covering its container) and a real hover-state bug (white text on white background, traced to a specificity conflict between an override and D7's own ported :hover rule).

7. A5–A6 closed

  • A5: README.md in the theme — BS5 rationale, the three plugin swaps and why, the component-level (not per-asset-type-region) extension pattern, and an explicit list of the open per-asset-type presentation questions this sprint surfaced but didn't resolve (accent color, banner icon, brand lockup second segment) so the next person adding AV/Sources/Texts UI doesn't have to rediscover them.
  • A6: system.theme.yml's default flipped from olivero to shanti_sarvaka for real — the several drush config:set calls earlier in the branch were local-only previews for Than to look at work in progress, explicitly not exported until A1–A5 were done, per the sprint doc's own sequencing.

Commit 5c1e2ba.

8. PR opened

PR #169, targeting main, 16 commits. Test plan lists what's been verified live (block regions, Explore/hamburger interaction, hover states, the theme flip itself) vs. what still needs the group's own visual sign-off on the running DDEV instance.

What's still open (see the theme README for full detail)

  • Per-asset-type accent color / banner icon / brand lockup second segment. D7 had a real mechanism for this (per-site Color module config); D11's single shared theme has no direct equivalent. Currently hardcoded to Images' values since it's the only live asset type — needs an actual decision once a second asset type lands.
  • True multi-level menu drill-down beyond one level — the Offcanvas rebuild handles one level; current menu content is flat, so this is unverified against real nested menus.
  • Faceted search UI — module installed, not configured or wired to the kmassets index.
  • Content overflow inside the 266px hamburger panel for any block wider than that (flagged early, not fully re-verified after the later sizing passes).

Artifacts
Opened, not yet merged PR #169 — Sprint 2 Workstream A: shanti_sarvaka base theme + facets install
New drupal/web/themes/custom/shanti_sarvaka/ — the theme itself (templates, CSS, JS, README)
Config change drupal/config/sync/system.theme.yml — default theme is now shanti_sarvaka
Config change drupal/composer.json/composer.lock — core 11.3.11 → 11.4.5, drupal/bootstrap5, drupal/facets added

Next-session starting point

Get the group's visual sign-off on PR #169 against the live DDEV instance, then merge. Once merged, install the theme on the dev site (dev-0) so the group can review it against real migrated content rather than DDEV's local data — that's the immediate next step, ahead of the open items below. After that, the open items above (per-asset-type accent color, faceted search wiring, multi-level menu verification) are natural next tickets — none of them block the merge itself.