Retracing steps after composer update introduced log error - laravel

Question

I'm working on my first laravel project, using laravel 5.1.28, homestead, and postgres.
Recently I updated composer.json for the first time in a while (and did composer update for the first time in a while), and now everything looks good in my sandbox, but my builds fail in heroku with the following error:
Generating optimized autoload files
php artisan clear-compiled
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught ReflectionException: Class log does not exist in /tmp/build_4b890192877bdbf1f605fbefdc7b2f34/dianekaplan-Family-laravel-e49374e/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:741
I've read through about 5 threads for this error and tried the various fixes that resolved the different issues others had to lead to this error, but none of them seem to be mine.
So a different question: how do I go back in time from the perspective of composer? Does the composer.lock ride along with git so I could theoretically go back to that point, be able to have successful builds again, and then do a composer update again one day when I have a buddy and time to work through the fallout? (I'm a newbie, so an issue like this is crippling)
What approach can get me back to where I was for the time being?
Based on feedback in the comments I tried:
- replacing my composer.lock with a version that was in place back when builds were still succeeding (thank you, git!), then doing composer install (rather than update, so it would honor those old version numbers)- but afterward the build still failed with that same error above
- composer dump, composer update --no-scripts, and composer update (in that order), but afterward the build still failed with that same error above
:(:(:(
Here's what's in my composer.json:
{
"name": "laravel/laravel",
"description": "The Laravel Framework.",
"keywords": ["framework", "laravel"],
"license": "MIT",
"type": "project",
"require": {
"php": ">=5.5.9",
"laravel/framework": "5.1.*",
"doctrine/dbal": "^2.5",
"illuminate/html": "^5.0",
"laracasts/flash": "^1.3",
"cloudinary/cloudinary_php": "dev-master",
"jrm2k6/cloudder": "0.2.*",
"Illuminate/Support": "^5.1"
},
"require-dev": {
"fzaninotto/faker": "~1.4",
"mockery/mockery": "0.9.*",
"phpunit/phpunit": "~4.0",
"phpspec/phpspec": "~2.1",
"laracasts/generators": "^1.1"
},
"autoload": {
"classmap": [
"database",
"app/mailers"
],
"psr-4": {
"App\\": "app/"
}
},
"autoload-dev": {
"classmap": [
"tests/TestCase.php"
]
},
"scripts": {
"post-install-cmd": [
"php artisan clear-compiled",
"php artisan optimize"
],
"pre-update-cmd": [
"php artisan clear-compiled"
],
"post-update-cmd": [
"php artisan optimize"
],
"post-root-package-install": [
"php -r \"copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
],
"post-create-project-cmd": [
"php artisan key:generate"
]
},
"config": {
"preferred-install": "dist"
}
}

Answer 1

I've tried composer update on a 5.1 app using your composer.json, and didn't run into any issues - so the error likely comes from code somewhere in your app - it looks likely that you're using the Log facade to log something, eg. Log::error('message'), but you've written it as log::error('message'). After finding that, you may still have the same error when updating, in which case temporarily remove the following from composer.json before running composer update:
"pre-update-cmd": [
"php artisan clear-compiled"
],
On a side note there are a couple of other issues in your dependencies:
illuminate/html is deprecated/abandoned, replace it with laravelcollective/html instead.
illuminate/support is a part of laravel/framework, so is unnecessary and can be removed.