Should extension shims be avoided in Composer? - composer-php

Question

Let's say I have some code in a package that requires ext-oauth to handle OAuth signature generation.
{
"name":"vendor/my-package",
"type":"library",
"require":{
"ext-oauth":"*"
}
}
When I try to install this package on a system that doesn't have the extension, Composer raises an error, as expected.
$ composer install
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.
Problem 1
- The requested PHP extension ext-oauth * is missing from your system. Install or enable PHP's oauth extension.
Clearly the ext-oauth package is missing on this system, checking via composer show --platform confirms this.
Assume the system can't be updated to include the extension, virtualization (via Docker or Vagrant) also isn't an option. Would hacking around it by using a package that provides the ext-oauth extension or require'ng a package from packagist be a reasonable solution?
This synthetic test appears to work.
{
"name":"vendor/my-package",
"type":"library",
"require":{
"vendor/ext-oauth":"1.0",
"ext-oauth":"*"
},
"repositories":[
{
"type":"package",
"package":{
"name":"vendor/ext-oauth",
"version":"1.0",
"dist":{
"url":"https://example.com/ext-oauth.zip",
"type":"zip"
},
"provide":{
"ext-oauth":"1.0"
},
"autoload":[
"files":[
"src/oauth.php",
"src/oauthexception.php"
]
]
}
}
]
}
Composer then downloads the provided shim and installs it, marking the ext-oauth dependency as met.
$ composer install
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Package operations: 1 install, 0 updates, 0 removals
- Installing vendor/ext-oauth (1.0): Downloading (100%)
Writing lock file
Generating autoload files
This feels wrong, but appears to accomplish satisfying the dependency in a maintainable way. Is there a good reason - other than code smell - to avoid providing this sort of shim when PHP extensions can't be installed?