Composer option to use alternative to composer.json? - composer-php

Question

I've just started using the Composer feature where you tell it to look at local directories for dependencies, so that you can develop a library and something that uses that library in parallel without having to push to git to update all the time, which is awesome. e.g.
"repositories": [
{
"type": "vcs",
"url": "/documents/projects/github/guzzle"
}
],
"require":{
"guzzle/guzzle": "3.7.*#dev"
}
So when you do a composer update, Composer will pull in the version of Guzzle from the local directory, so you can test the code for a library in another application that uses that library without having to push to a repository between each code change.
However I just almost checked in the composer.json for my project with that set - which is obviously not going to work on anyone elses machine.
Is there anyway to tell composer to use a different file than composer.json, or other way to be able to tell composer to use local directories safely, without the high probability of accidentally committing a broken version of composer.json to your repository?

Answer 1

Use the COMPOSER environment variable:
env COMPOSER=composer-dev.json composer install
It has actually been available since at least 2012.

Answer 2

Instead of fetching from a local repository elsewhere you could add the option --prefer-source to the composer install/update command and remove the local repository reference.
That way composer will call git clone the software into the vendor directory, and you can develop both your software and commit to the vendor software, because that also is a fully working git repo.
Adding local repository references is not really recommended. It works when using them for real local software, but maintaining it has it's overhead: You have to mention this repository in every composer.json file that will ever load that software, even if it is only an indirect dependency (i.e. you add a software that needs THIS software as a dependency in your local repo).
Hardcoding the URL of the repository will also prevent you from changing it at will. Even though you could move the repo and change the URL accordingly, all older versions of your software still have the old URL in both composer.json and composer.lock files, and will try to load from there.

Answer 3

It looks like there isn't a way to do this nicely within Composer, however it is possible to hack around it.
In your composer.json file put a comment where you want to hack in some data.
{
"name": "base-reality/intahwebz",
"//": "LOCALHACK",
"require":{
"base-reality/php-to-javascript": ">=0.1.17",
"guzzle/danackguzzle": "3.3.*#dev",
...
...
}
...
}
Then have a separate file composer.local (not committed to Git) that contains the references to local directories:
"LOCALHACK",
"repositories": [
{
"type": "vcs",
"url": "/documents/projects/github/intahwebz-core"
}
],
Add a tiny PHP script called composerLocal.php to generate the new composer.json file
<?php
$srcFile = file_get_contents("composer.json");
$hackFile = file_get_contents("composer.local");
$finalString = str_replace('"LOCALHACK",', $hackFile, $srcFile);
file_put_contents("composer.json", $finalString);
?>
And a little bash script called localupdate.sh to backup the real composer.json file, generate the hacked composer.json, run Composer and then restore the original composer.json file
cp -f composer.json composer.json.bak
php composerLocal.php
composer update
cp -f composer.json.bak composer.json
Running the localupdate.sh script allows you to test the commits locally without having the danger of modifying the actual composer.json file used by the project, so there is less chance of accidentally pushing an invalid composer.json into the repository.
Just to note, Composer doesn't read the files from the respository directory, it reads the commited files in Git so you do need to commit changes made to the library code. The above process just skips the pushing step.

Answer 4

This should also work:
composer config --file=composer2.json && composer install
see https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#usage

Answer 5

Easy, just use artifact.
In repositories add this:
{
"type": "artifact",
"url": "path/to/artifact/files/"
},
Now you just need to create the directory and zip a copy of your repository into that dir.
Name zipped files like so:
[vendorname]-[packagename]-[version].zip
example:
querypath-QueryPath-3.0.0.zip
Now you can modify the package locally and it will pull from the zip file instead of the online repo.
In require add it like so and specify version as defined in zip:
"querypath/QueryPath": "3.0.0",
With this method you will have the ability to edit the vendor files and composer will still update any autoloaders relative to the changes and it will leave your changes alone.