---
title: "Drupal 9: Getting Ready For The Upgrade"
url: https://www.axelerant.com/blog/drupal-9-getting-ready-for-the-upgrade
published: 2019-07-29T04:00:00Z
author: "Rajiv Singh, PHP/Drupal Engineer - L3"
source: Axelerant Thinking
---

# Drupal 9: Getting Ready For The Upgrade

> Introduction

## Introduction

Every release of a major Drupal version is a big event in the Drupal community. It has always been a reason to celebrate. But developers, clients and marketers are also anxious about the challenges they may face during the upgrading process.

Recently, there has been quite a buzz in the Drupal community about the release of Drupal 9 on June 3, 2020. The community is also trying to support Drupal 7 and Drupal 8.

## Let’s Get Ready for the Drupal 9 Upgrade

As per the [official documentation](https://www.drupal.org/docs/9), Drupal 9 will be a cleaned-up version of Drupal 8. Similar to the last Drupal 8 minor version, deprecated code will be removed, and third-party dependencies will be updated.

Drupal 9 = Drupal 8 - (Deprecated code cleanup + Updated third-party dependency)

Code in Drupal is marked as "deprecated" when it should no longer be used. Typically, code is deprecated because there is a better alternative that should be used instead. Upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 should be easy if the use of deprecated code is being checked regularly and removed upon detection.

## How to Know If a Site Uses a Deprecated Code

The following three tools can be used to check if your site is using a deprecated code:

1. [Drupal-check](https://github.com/mglaman/drupal-check): This static PHP code analysis tool developed by [Matt Glaman](https://www.drupal.org/u/mglaman) can be used to check your codebase for deprecated code.

Here is a video which explains the use of drupal-check:

 
You can automate this process by making it an integral part of your development workflow. A [docker image](https://hub.docker.com/r/hussainweb/drupalqa) contributed by [Hussain Abbas ](https://www.drupal.org/u/hussainweb)is worth mentioning here.

1. [Upgrade Status](https://www.drupal.org/project/upgrade_status): This is a contributed module by Acquia which scans the code of contributed and custom projects you may have installed, and reports on any deprecated code that needs to be replaced.

1. BLT: If your project is based on BLT, it is exciting to know that [the deprecated code check is now part of BLT 10](https://github.com/acquia/blt/pull/3386), and will now be available as other validation check.

[Dwayne McDaniel](https://www.drupal.org/u/mcdwayne) from [Pantheon](https://pantheon.io/) analyzed all 7000 contributed modules for Drupal 8 using drupal-check.

- 44 percent of the modules have no deprecation warnings.

- The remaining 56 percent of the modules need to be updated.

- The majority of modules have less than 3 deprecated warnings.

If you are planning to upgrade your Drupal 8 version then it is the right time to start cleaning your codebase by removing any deprecated code. Once your codebase is free of deprecated code, your upgrade to Drupal 9 will be as easy as a minor version upgrade.

---

Read on the web: https://www.axelerant.com/blog/drupal-9-getting-ready-for-the-upgrade