Is it possible to override Social Office theme in Liferay 6.1?

Question

I would like to override Social Office theme (so-theme) in Liferay 6.1.20 EE, because I would like to use its layout and social office experience, but with some changes in css, page templates, etc.

I've already seen this question but it is concluded that there is no way to do it, except from editing the actual so-theme, which development-wise and upgrade-wise is obviously problematic.

I've tried copying the whole so-theme with its jars to a new theme project, so that I could have a diff folder with my changes, but I did not manage to make it work.

I have made the proper changes (plugin name etc) in properties files and after I deploy it, I can see my new theme (w/o icon though) but when I select it, the following exception is thrown:

09:37:23,043 INFO  [com.liferay.portal.plugin.PluginPackageUtil][PluginPackageUtil:1465] Finished checking for available updates in 1125 ms
Exception in thread "http-bio-9091-exec-4" java.lang.StackOverflowError
    at java.util.HashMap.getEntry(HashMap.java:344)
    at java.util.HashMap.containsKey(HashMap.java:335)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.setAttribute(Request.java:1512)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.RequestFacade.setAttribute(RequestFacade.java:542)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilter.doFilter(InvokerFilter.java:62)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilterChain.processDoFilter(InvokerFilterChain.java:206)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilterChain.doFilter(InvokerFilterChain.java:108)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilter.doFilter(InvokerFilter.java:73)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilterChain.processDoFilter(InvokerFilterChain.java:206)

Is it possible to manage it somehow? Maybe with some additional configuration's in my theme's properties files? I can provide more code if needed.

Answer 1

The easiest way to access so-theme in a development-friendly way is to just use the source. (Choose the proper tag/branch). Should be easier than manually creating the _diffs folder. Please try with this and report back if it does not help