Customizability of v1.0

[dfuchss]

Hi @alshedivat,
today I recognized the plans of v1.0 to modularize al-folio (or parts of it). Probably, I did not understand everything, but from what I've seen in the v1.0-dev branch, I cannot find any _layout folder anymore => I guess those have been moved to the modules (?).

From my point of view this raises the question of future customizability of al-folio?

I'm quite happy with using al-folio for my website, but I created some personal tweaks in the liquids (nothing I would say needs to be in the main al-folio repository; because I also disable simply some parts that I don't need/want).

As an example; a very simple tweak that changes some urls if you click on an element in my repositories page:

In the past, it was quite easy to do this: I simply edit the liquid file and can easily sync that with the upstream repository via GIT; sometimes you have to deal with merge conflicts, but they are not that often and most of the time, git handles the merge.

With the upcoming modularization, it is not clear to me whether I will need to fork every module where I want to make an update in a liquid file (in order to easily keep track of changes that occur in future updates of those modules).
If thats the case customizations would come with the price of having to sync multiple, building custom gems, deployments etc.

Do I miss anything or what will be a future way of customizing a liquid + tracking changes with upstream, without forking those module repositories?

Best regards,
@dfuchss

[dfuchss]

Maybe as a side note / question:

I already had the case, where I wanted to update/fix a liquid in a module (see #3535).
If the affected file would have been in the repository a fix would have been easy (and a PR as well).
As far as I can see for #3535 (and any future bugfix in an al-folio module repository) fixing an issue would also include releasing a new version of al-folio in order to trigger new docker images etc. instead of simply merging upstream and re-using the current docker image.

Is that right or is there a more easy way?
I try to figure out, what the future maintenance effort for my personal and projects websites will be 😅 (And I fear that I have to maintain x forks for just some websites because of some minor tweaks 😅 )