Drupal Module Upgrader 2.0.0-alpha2 Restores Compatibility with Drupal 10 and 11

A new experimental release of the Drupal Module Upgrader restores the long-standing migration tool’s ability to run on Drupal 10 and Drupal 11. Drupal contributor Gábor Hojtsy published version 2.0.0-alpha2 after restoring compatibility with recent PHP versions that had previously prevented the tool from running reliably.

The update was described in a blog post published on 7 March 2026. Hojtsy outlined how the project, which had seen limited maintenance in recent years, could be revived by repairing its underlying dependencies and updating legacy code paths affected by changes introduced with PHP 8.

Drupal Module Upgrader was originally created in 2014 at Acquia by Angie Byron and Adam Hoenich to assist developers migrating custom Drupal 7 modules to newer versions of Drupal. The project relied on a PHP code-manipulation library called Pharborist, developed by Cameron Zemek at PreviousNext, which enabled automated transformations of legacy module code.

Over time, maintaining the tool became increasingly difficult. Pharborist predated the widely used Rector refactoring framework and lacked a large contributor base. When Drupal 10 introduced support for PHP 8, changes to language tokenisation rules created compatibility problems for both Pharborist and Drupal Module Upgrader.

Several contributors attempted to maintain the project. João Ventura of 1xINTERNET forked Pharborist to maintain it in a dedicated repository and collaborated with Joseph Olstad to revive the upgrader module. Later, Andy Fowlston of FABB contributed PHP compatibility updates and improvements to the project’s testing infrastructure, although some changes remained unmerged.

According to Hojtsy’s account, the recent repair effort involved analysing unresolved pull requests, addressing failing tests, expanding test coverage, and resolving dependency issues. The work produced a fully passing Pharborist test suite compatible with PHPUnit 12 and allowed the upgrader module itself to run on Drupal 10 and Drupal 11.

The 2.0.0-alpha2 release does not attempt to completely modernise the tool’s transformation logic. Instead, it provides a best-effort upgrade assistant that may help developers begin migrating Drupal 7 custom modules to newer versions of Drupal.

Hojtsy noted that the experiment demonstrates how existing open-source tools can sometimes be restored through targeted maintenance work, potentially extending their usefulness for developers still maintaining legacy Drupal installations.