To access the development version of the default themes or to create your own theme, the theme_paths configuration parameter needs to be added to the ~/.clearos configuration file. The example below shows an example for the themes sitting in /home/devuser/themes:
\clearos\framework\Config::$theme_paths = array('themes');
For the old SVN tree, the configuration parameter should look something like:
\clearos\framework\Config::$theme_paths = array('clearos/webconfig/themes');