BuddyPress.org

I inherited a WP/BP/bbPress project. I’ve been trying to understand how the last developer configured everything, including custom buddypress changes. There is a buddypress-functions.php file in my themes directory. In functions.php several buddypress js files are loaded from a theme subfolder “/static/js/” including mentions.min.js, jquery.atwho.min.js, jquery.caret.min.js, along with other buddypress core js files.

I understand that there are situations where you would have your own buddypress-functions.php file and the /theme/buddypress/*/ folders for customization, but it can’t possibly be the right thing to be loading your own copies of buddypress js files.

When I remove the js files from enqueuing and delete the buddypress-functions.php I would expect that the installation would revert to using the files in the /plugins/buddypress/ folder but things like @mentions stop working when I make these changes (although a lot of buddypress functionality continues to work).

I guess my question is how do I get the theme to actually use the proper buddypress files from the plugin and am I correct that loading static old js files for buddypress is a totally insane thing to do?