Is adding BLT to an existing project still a viable option?

[bkosborne]

I have a D8 project based on lightning that is hosted with Acquia. We do local development with DevDesktop at the moment, using a repo separate from the Acquia repo. To "deploy" the code I'm currently rsyncing files to the Acquia repo.

I'd like to add BLT into the mix as a code deployment tool. Essentially my expectation is to run a BLT command that will create a build artifact that is then pushed to my Acquia repo, so I don't have to do the deployments manually like I am now.

I followed the guide here: http://blt.readthedocs.io/en/8.x/readme/adding-to-project/

• Added "acquia/blt": "^8.5" to my project.
• Went to step 2 here: http://blt.readthedocs.io/en/8.x/readme/creating-new-project/, which says to install the BLT alias. However this doesn't work because it relies on having a composer script added to your composer file (which is part of the blt template). I found this and added it manually, then it worked.
• Step 3 says to customize the project.yml file, but I don't have that file. It's not clear how to get that file? Running blt setup fails as well because it expects that file to be there.

Is there some setup step I'm missing that would bring in these BLT "scaffold" files?

[grasmash]

Did you run composer update after adding BLT to composer.json? That should add the scaffold files automatically. I did not, you can also run a 'blt update' to do this.

[bkosborne]

Thanks. Running composer update doesn't appear to copy the files in, but running blt update did.

I see that BLT modifies the composer.json file of my project and adds quite a bit. I assume I can rip all of that out? For instance it added "drupal/core" but I already include "drupal/lightning" which itself has a requirement for Drupal core. And it added a few modules I won't use.

[grasmash]

Yes, see "Modifying update behavior" on http://blt.readthedocs.io/en/8.x/readme/updating-blt/