Allow install profiles to be switched

I think install profiles are still a weird concept.

#6 (Sheldon Rampton, 12 years ago)

I'm increasingly of the opinion that there is a significant design flaw embedded in the current concept of "installation profiles."

"Installation" is something that happens once, and only once, when a website is first created. I think it is inherently problematic, therefore, to use installation profiles to both perform initial setup and to provide site configuration after the initial setup has been completed.

There is also the scenario where a team works on a project without sharing a database dump.
Perhaps during an early phase of development, or there are other reasons.

Such teams will currently run into the problem where install from existing config does not work if the profile contains a hook_install(). See 🐛 Allow an install hook in profiles installing from configuration Needs work .

For my taste, after initial installation, the concept of an install profile seems quite useless.

The main purpose of an install profile is to guide the initial installation, and (what currently doesn't work so well), additional non-configuration setup when installing from existing config.

An install profile _can_ be a container for modules and themes in a distribution.
However, I don't really see a benefit from this: It turns a distribution into an island or prison, instead of something you can grow out of.

I support this issue and the one I linked above, but long term maybe we should rethink this concept.

@donquixote you should check out the recipes initiative which is trying to do exactly this.

I think we can postpone this issue on 🐛 Install profile is disabled for lots of different reasons and core doesn't allow for that Fixed - not convinced there's any benefit to switching to a new install profile, if you can uninstall one instead.