I’ve been slowly chipping away at a side project that includes a set of related Drupal Recipes. Given the repeatable nature of recipes, I apply them after a clean install frequently, and have a shell script that automates this process.

After some recent changes I found that one of my recipes was not applying cleanly. In an effort to debug, I ran the drush recipe command with the -v flag to get verbose output. Debugging aside, I found the output to be really useful.

Here’s what I’d see when applying the sanctuary_graphql recipe without the verbose flag:

ddev drush recipe recipes/sanctuary_graphql
12/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Simple OAuth & OpenID Connect module.
25/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓]
Applied Sanctuary GraphQL recipe.

 [OK] Sanctuary GraphQL applied successfully

and this is the output with the -v flag:

ddev drush recipe recipes/sanctuary_graphql -v
 [info] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalRoot()
 [info] Change working directory to /var/www/html/web
 [info] Initialized Drupal 10.4.1 root directory at /var/www/html/web
 [info] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalSite()
 [info] Initialized Drupal site sanctuary.ddev.site at sites/default
 [info] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalConfiguration()
 [info] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalDatabase()
 [info] Successfully connected to the Drupal database.
 [info] Drush bootstrap phase: bootstrapDrupalFull()
 0/25 [░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Applying recipe
 [info] decoupled_preview_iframe module installed.
 3/25 [▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Config Pages module.
 5/25 [▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Paragraphs module.
 [info] paragraphs_edit module installed.
 8/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Sanctuary module.
10/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Iconify Icons module.
 [info] menu_item_extras module installed.
 [info] simple_oauth module installed.
13/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░]
15/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░]
Installed Typed Data module.
 [info] graphql module installed.
18/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░]
Installed Sanctuary GraphQL module.
20/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░]
Installed GraphQL Compose: Routes module.
 [info] graphql_compose_menus module installed.
25/25 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓]
Applied Sanctuary GraphQL recipe.

Modules installed
-----------------

 * Config Pages
 * Consumers
 * Decoupled Preview Iframe
 * Entity Reference Revisions
 * Frontend Editing
 * GraphQL
 * GraphQL Compose
 * GraphQL Compose: Edges
 * GraphQL Compose: Menus
 * GraphQL Compose: Preview
 * GraphQL Compose: Routes
 * Iconify Icons
 * Menu Item Extras
 * Paragraphs
 * Paragraphs Edit
 * Sanctuary
 * Sanctuary GraphQL
 * Serialization
 * Simple OAuth & OpenID Connect
 * Token
 * Typed Data

Recipes applied
---------------

 * Sanctuary Core
 * Sanctuary GraphQL


 [OK] Sanctuary GraphQL applied successfully

This is verbose (as advertised) but pretty essential information, especially if you’re applying a recipe for the first time. Without -v all we really know is that the recipe was applied successfully. With -v we get a list of all of the modules installed, and also see that another recipe was applied as a dependency.

I’d often find myself either reviewing the source code of a recipe, or skimming the module page in the admin UI to understand what was actually included. This verbose output is a much quicker way to get that info.

From what I can tell, -v and -vv provide the same output. -vvv is more verbose, but I haven’t found the extra info super useful as of yet. None of these options seem to provide debug output for config actions, which is the only thing I could see as a useful addition. (Update: there is an open issue for this.)

I realize that ‘try running it with debug output’ is hardly a groundbreaking tip, but in the case of recipes this additional info is really handy. Going forward, I’ll be using -v by default when applying new recipes so that I can get a better sense of what’s being added to my site.