PHP Composer for Developers

Ever wanted to make a bugfix to a Composer package? You can!

Get a local git clone of the dependency by requiring it with the –prefer-source option.

composer require kizu514/package --prefer-source

But wait that’s not all! If you have your own GitHub namespace you can set things up so that your own code is always installed from source. For example, In the following composer.json snippet all the packages from kizu514 are installed from source, and everything else is dist.

{
    "config": {
        "preferred-install": {
            "kizu514/*": "source",
            "*": "dist"
        }
    }
}

Ever wanted to use a git branch instead of a specific version? You can!

Use inline aliases. To declare an inline alias you must:

• Prefix branch names with: dev
• No wildcards (*), must be unambigous.

For example, if my composer.json file had this in it:

"kizu514/package": "1.*",

Then to use a branch I would simply change it to:

"kizu514/package": "dev-BRANCH_NAME as 1.0.9",

Where BRANCH_NAME is a branch that exists on GitHub and 1.0.9 is unambiguous. If you want to check out a branch instead of a tag then simply do:

"kizu514/package": "dev-BRANCH_NAME",

What about private repos?

Use Private Packagist or add to your repositories configuration:

{
  "type": "vcs",
  "no-api": true,
  "url":  "git@github.com:kizu514/secret-project.git"
}

But wait that’s not all! Oh wait, yes, it is.