Namespacing and themes

[aiBR3]

I usually write sites with this structure:

my-site/
├── config/
│   ├── _default/
│   │   ├── hugo.toml
│   │   ├── languages.toml
│   │   ├── params.toml
│   │   └── privacy.toml
│   └── development/
│       └── ...
└── ...

After filling the content folder, I like to try out a few themes and switch between them as quickly as possible.

During this initial phase, I prepare a params-[theme name].toml for each theme; to switch, I have to write the correct theme in hugo.toml and rename the respective configuration file in params.toml.

I just discovered this feature in Hugo: namespacing!

So can I have a single params.toml file and separate the parameters for each theme within it? Something like this inside my params.toml:

[theme]
  [theme.relearn]
    alwaysopen = ''
    breadcrumbSeparator = '>'
    collapsibleMenu = true
    customMathJaxURL = ''
    customMermaidURL = ''
    customOpenapiURL = ''
    dateFormat = ':date_medium'
    disableAnchorCopy = false
    ...
  [theme.another]
    ...

Am I required to install themes as modules? In this case:

[modules]
  [modules.relearn]
    alwaysopen = ''
    breadcrumbSeparator = '>'
    collapsibleMenu = true
    customMathJaxURL = ''
    customMermaidURL = ''
    customOpenapiURL = ''
    dateFormat = ':date_medium'
    disableAnchorCopy = false
    ...
  [modules.another]
    ...

[McShelby]

As your linked page states:

To prevent naming conflicts, module and theme developers should namespace any custom parameters specific to their module or theme.

While this is a great idea in general, it lacks from practicality. In a well established theme like Relearn with years of development, it's not easy to change this as it would generate huge amounts of work for any existing user who would like to upgrade the theme. Additionally it is not enforced by Hugo itself. So I don't know of any existing theme that already switched to that recommended way.

If you only want to test it locally, you could go the same route as with your development directory. Just create another config directory for each theme and start Hugo with this environment. This would work for the global theme configuration but not for the front matter parameter in your Markdown files

[aiBR3]

Thank you for your patience and taking the time to explain!