Drush Make

Drush Make was the drush make command. It read a makefile and downloaded what the file listed, such as Drupal core, contributed modules and themes, external libraries and patches, into a ready-to-use codebase. A makefile was plain text in YAML syntax or the older .info format, so a whole Drupal distribution could ship as one text file.

Status today

The Drush 8 documentation opens with the notice that make is no longer maintained and points to a Composer project template instead. The old standalone Drush Make project on drupal.org was marked unsupported and obsolete when checked on 2026-10-26; its page says make had become part of Drush as of version 5.x. The Drush 9 install page supports only sites built with Composer, and the Drush 13 command list contains no make command. The Drush 13 install page gives January 2025 as the end of life of Drush 8.

How it worked, and what replaces it

A makefile had three key lines: core for the Drupal version, api for the makefile format version and projects for what to download. Drush Make could also fetch from Git, SVN, bzr and plain archives, and could apply patches.

Composer does this job from composer.json. Drupal.org's comparison page maps the main makefile features:

Drush Make	Composer
Project version	Version constraint in require
Patch	The cweagans/composer-patches plugin, configured in extra.patches
Subdirectory and destination	installer-paths in extra
Libraries	A package of type drupal-library
Download from another location	A custom repository

Example

A Drush 8 makefile that fetches Drupal 7 core looked like this:

core: 7.x
        api: 2
        projects:
          - drupal
        

A new Drupal site now starts from the recommended template instead:

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project my-project
        

Drupal.org calls this the recommended project layout. It puts index.php and the core folder in a web subfolder, so the web server can be set to serve only the files inside it.

Common mistakes

• Following old build guides. Instructions that start with drush make belong to the Drush 8 era. Look for the Composer version of the same task.
• Mixing update methods. Drupal.org warns that a site may hit critical update problems when it mixes Composer updates with other methods. Once core comes from Composer, add modules and themes the same way.

For marketing and content teams

If an agency describes its build as a makefile, ask whether the site is managed with Composer, because Composer is the supported way to build and update the codebase.

Sources

• Drush 8 documentation: Drush Make (checked 2026-10-26)
• Drupal.org: Drush Make project page (checked 2026-10-26)
• Drush 9 documentation: Install
• Drupal.org: Composer in relation to Drush Make
• Drupal.org: Starting a site using Drupal Composer project templates
• Drupal.org: Using Composer to install Drupal and manage dependencies
• Drush 13 command list
• Drush 13: Install and Drupal compatibility