drupal:sync:default:site and ckeditor 4 removal and other updb issues about blt

[mikemadison13]

My strong recommendation (due to situations like this) is to NOT sync databases during CI/CD. If you need config/content from your other sites, you can import those items specifically using config management and the default content module. There isn't a great work around for this. If the module is gone in the CI/CD container, it's going to throw this error.

[loopy3025]

I'm starting to agree with you.

We're currently running pa11y tests during ci in order to catch accessibility issues. At the time we did this, it seemed to make sense to sync the database so we can test against existing content and full Views, all in context with how the users actually use the site. All of our testing went great and we've been happily using it for a couple of months now. Hindsight being 20-20, I'd have pushed harder to do a default content module of some kind to enable during CI instead of syncing the database. But now we're stuck with syncing on a LOT of sites if/until I can argue that methodology.

For the time being, I may meet halfway and switch the default site our stage environment. That way I can at least manipulate the database and re-run Pipelines as needed.

[loopy3025]

I do really wish, though, that Drupal itself handled uninstalled modules better. It's pretty annoying that you need to have the module code in the codebase in order to uninstall a module properly. But I guess that's not really BLT's problem.