22 KiB
Command-line interface / Commands
You've already learned how to use the command-line interface to do some things. This chapter documents all the available commands.
To get help from the command-line, simply call composer
or composer list
to see the complete list of commands, then --help
combined with any of those
can give you more information.
Global Options
The following options are available with every command:
- --verbose (-v): Increase verbosity of messages.
- --help (-h): Display help information.
- --quiet (-q): Do not output any message.
- --no-interaction (-n): Do not ask any interactive question.
- --working-dir (-d): If specified, use the given directory as working directory.
- --profile: Display timing and memory usage information
- --ansi: Force ANSI output.
- --no-ansi: Disable ANSI output.
- --version (-V): Display this application version.
Process Exit Codes
- 0: OK
- 1: Generic/unknown error code
- 2: Dependency solving error code
init
In the Libraries chapter we looked at how to create a
composer.json
by hand. There is also an init
command available that makes
it a bit easier to do this.
When you run the command it will interactively ask you to fill in the fields, while using some smart defaults.
php composer.phar init
Options
- --name: Name of the package.
- --description: Description of the package.
- --author: Author name of the package.
- --homepage: Homepage of the package.
- --require: Package to require with a version constraint. Should be
in format
foo/bar:1.0.0
. - --require-dev: Development requirements, see --require.
- --stability (-s): Value for the
minimum-stability
field.
install
The install
command reads the composer.json
file from the current
directory, resolves the dependencies, and installs them into vendor
.
php composer.phar install
If there is a composer.lock
file in the current directory, it will use the
exact versions from there instead of resolving them. This ensures that
everyone using the library will get the same versions of the dependencies.
If there is no composer.lock
file, composer will create one after dependency
resolution.
Options
- --prefer-source: There are two ways of downloading a package:
source
anddist
. For stable versions composer will use thedist
by default. Thesource
is a version control repository. If--prefer-source
is enabled, composer will install fromsource
if there is one. This is useful if you want to make a bugfix to a project and get a local git clone of the dependency directly. - --prefer-dist: Reverse of
--prefer-source
, composer will install fromdist
if possible. This can speed up installs substantially on build servers and other use cases where you typically do not run updates of the vendors. It is also a way to circumvent problems with git if you do not have a proper setup. - --ignore-platform-reqs: ignore
php
,hhvm
,lib-*
andext-*
requirements and force the installation even if the local machine does not fulfill these. - --dry-run: If you want to run through an installation without actually
installing a package, you can use
--dry-run
. This will simulate the installation and show you what would happen. - --dev: Install packages listed in
require-dev
(this is the default behavior). - --no-dev: Skip installing packages listed in
require-dev
. - --no-scripts: Skips execution of scripts defined in
composer.json
. - --no-plugins: Disables plugins.
- --no-progress: Removes the progress display that can mess with some terminals or scripts which don't handle backspace characters.
- --optimize-autoloader (-o): Convert PSR-0/4 autoloading to classmap to get a faster autoloader. This is recommended especially for production, but can take a bit of time to run so it is currently not done by default.
update
In order to get the latest versions of the dependencies and to update the
composer.lock
file, you should use the update
command.
php composer.phar update
This will resolve all dependencies of the project and write the exact versions
into composer.lock
.
If you just want to update a few packages and not all, you can list them as such:
php composer.phar update vendor/package vendor/package2
You can also use wildcards to update a bunch of packages at once:
php composer.phar update vendor/*
Options
- --prefer-source: Install packages from
source
when available. - --prefer-dist: Install packages from
dist
when available. - --ignore-platform-reqs: ignore
php
,hhvm
,lib-*
andext-*
requirements and force the installation even if the local machine does not fulfill these. - --dry-run: Simulate the command without actually doing anything.
- --dev: Install packages listed in
require-dev
(this is the default behavior). - --no-dev: Skip installing packages listed in
require-dev
. - --no-scripts: Skips execution of scripts defined in
composer.json
. - --no-plugins: Disables plugins.
- --no-progress: Removes the progress display that can mess with some terminals or scripts which don't handle backspace characters.
- --optimize-autoloader (-o): Convert PSR-0/4 autoloading to classmap to get a faster autoloader. This is recommended especially for production, but can take a bit of time to run so it is currently not done by default.
- --lock: Only updates the lock file hash to suppress warning about the lock file being out of date.
- --with-dependencies Add also all dependencies of whitelisted packages to the whitelist.
- --prefer-stable: Prefer stable versions of dependencies.
- --prefer-lowest: Prefer lowest versions of dependencies. Useful for testing minimal
versions of requirements, generally used with
--prefer-stable
.
require
The require
command adds new packages to the composer.json
file from
the current directory. If no file exists one will be created on the fly.
php composer.phar require
After adding/changing the requirements, the modified requirements will be installed or updated.
If you do not want to choose requirements interactively, you can just pass them to the command.
php composer.phar require vendor/package:2.* vendor/package2:dev-master
Options
- --prefer-source: Install packages from
source
when available. - --prefer-dist: Install packages from
dist
when available. - --ignore-platform-reqs: ignore
php
,hhvm
,lib-*
andext-*
requirements and force the installation even if the local machine does not fulfill these. - --dev: Add packages to
require-dev
. - --no-update: Disables the automatic update of the dependencies.
- --no-progress: Removes the progress display that can mess with some terminals or scripts which don't handle backspace characters.
- --update-no-dev Run the dependency update with the --no-dev option.
- --update-with-dependencies Also update dependencies of the newly required packages.
remove
The remove
command removes packages from the composer.json
file from
the current directory.
php composer.phar remove vendor/package vendor/package2
After removing the requirements, the modified requirements will be uninstalled.
Options
- --ignore-platform-reqs: ignore
php
,hhvm
,lib-*
andext-*
requirements and force the installation even if the local machine does not fulfill these. - --dev: Remove packages from
require-dev
. - --no-update: Disables the automatic update of the dependencies.
- --no-progress: Removes the progress display that can mess with some terminals or scripts which don't handle backspace characters.
- --update-no-dev Run the dependency update with the --no-dev option.
- --update-with-dependencies Also update dependencies of the removed packages.
global
The global command allows you to run other commands like install
, require
or update
as if you were running them from the COMPOSER_HOME
directory.
This can be used to install CLI utilities globally and if you add
$COMPOSER_HOME/vendor/bin
to your $PATH
environment variable. Here is an
example:
php composer.phar global require fabpot/php-cs-fixer:dev-master
Now the php-cs-fixer
binary is available globally (assuming you adjusted
your PATH). If you wish to update the binary later on you can just run a
global update:
php composer.phar global update
search
The search command allows you to search through the current project's package repositories. Usually this will be just packagist. You simply pass it the terms you want to search for.
php composer.phar search monolog
You can also search for more than one term by passing multiple arguments.
Options
- --only-name (-N): Search only in name.
show
To list all of the available packages, you can use the show
command.
php composer.phar show
If you want to see the details of a certain package, you can pass the package name.
php composer.phar show monolog/monolog
name : monolog/monolog
versions : master-dev, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0, 1.0.0-RC1
type : library
names : monolog/monolog
source : [git] http://github.com/Seldaek/monolog.git 3d4e60d0cbc4b888fe5ad223d77964428b1978da
dist : [zip] http://github.com/Seldaek/monolog/zipball/3d4e60d0cbc4b888fe5ad223d77964428b1978da 3d4e60d0cbc4b888fe5ad223d77964428b1978da
license : MIT
autoload
psr-0
Monolog : src/
requires
php >=5.3.0
You can even pass the package version, which will tell you the details of that specific version.
php composer.phar show monolog/monolog 1.0.2
Options
- --installed (-i): List the packages that are installed.
- --platform (-p): List only platform packages (php & extensions).
- --self (-s): List the root package info.
browse / home
The browse
(aliased to home
) opens a package's repository URL or homepage
in your browser.
Options
- --homepage (-H): Open the homepage instead of the repository URL.
depends
The depends
command tells you which other packages depend on a certain
package. You can specify which link types (require
, require-dev
)
should be included in the listing. By default both are used.
php composer.phar depends --link-type=require monolog/monolog
nrk/monolog-fluent
poc/poc
propel/propel
symfony/monolog-bridge
symfony/symfony
Options
- --link-type: The link types to match on, can be specified multiple times.
validate
You should always run the validate
command before you commit your
composer.json
file, and before you tag a release. It will check if your
composer.json
is valid.
php composer.phar validate
Options
- --no-check-all: Whether or not composer do a complete validation.
status
If you often need to modify the code of your dependencies and they are
installed from source, the status
command allows you to check if you have
local changes in any of them.
php composer.phar status
With the --verbose
option you get some more information about what was
changed:
php composer.phar status -v
You have changes in the following dependencies:
vendor/seld/jsonlint:
M README.mdown
self-update
To update composer itself to the latest version, just run the self-update
command. It will replace your composer.phar
with the latest version.
php composer.phar self-update
If you would like to instead update to a specific release simply specify it:
php composer.phar self-update 1.0.0-alpha7
If you have installed composer for your entire system (see global installation),
you may have to run the command with root
privileges
sudo composer self-update
Options
- --rollback (-r): Rollback to the last version you had installed.
- --clean-backups: Delete old backups during an update. This makes the current version of composer the only backup available after the update.
config
The config
command allows you to edit some basic composer settings in either
the local composer.json file or the global config.json file.
php composer.phar config --list
Usage
config [options] [setting-key] [setting-value1] ... [setting-valueN]
setting-key
is a configuration option name and setting-value1
is a
configuration value. For settings that can take an array of values (like
github-protocols
), more than one setting-value arguments are allowed.
See the config schema section for valid configuration options.
Options
- --global (-g): Operate on the global config file located at
$COMPOSER_HOME/config.json
by default. Without this option, this command affects the local composer.json file or a file specified by--file
. - --editor (-e): Open the local composer.json file using in a text editor as
defined by the
EDITOR
env variable. With the--global
option, this opens the global config file. - --unset: Remove the configuration element named by
setting-key
. - --list (-l): Show the list of current config variables. With the
--global
option this lists the global configuration only. - --file="..." (-f): Operate on a specific file instead of composer.json. Note
that this cannot be used in conjunction with the
--global
option. - --absolute: Returns absolute paths when fetching *-dir config values instead of relative.
Modifying Repositories
In addition to modifying the config section, the config
command also supports making
changes to the repositories section by using it the following way:
php composer.phar config repositories.foo vcs http://github.com/foo/bar
create-project
You can use Composer to create new projects from an existing package. This is the equivalent of doing a git clone/svn checkout followed by a composer install of the vendors.
There are several applications for this:
- You can deploy application packages.
- You can check out any package and start developing on patches for example.
- Projects with multiple developers can use this feature to bootstrap the initial application for development.
To create a new project using composer you can use the "create-project" command. Pass it a package name, and the directory to create the project in. You can also provide a version as third argument, otherwise the latest version is used.
If the directory does not currently exist, it will be created during installation.
php composer.phar create-project doctrine/orm path 2.2.*
It is also possible to run the command without params in a directory with an
existing composer.json
file to bootstrap a project.
By default the command checks for the packages on packagist.org.
Options
- --repository-url: Provide a custom repository to search for the package,
which will be used instead of packagist. Can be either an HTTP URL pointing
to a
composer
repository, or a path to a localpackages.json
file. - --stability (-s): Minimum stability of package. Defaults to
stable
. - --prefer-source: Install packages from
source
when available. - --prefer-dist: Install packages from
dist
when available. - --dev: Install packages listed in
require-dev
. - --no-install: Disables installation of the vendors.
- --no-plugins: Disables plugins.
- --no-scripts: Disables the execution of the scripts defined in the root package.
- --no-progress: Removes the progress display that can mess with some terminals or scripts which don't handle backspace characters.
- --keep-vcs: Skip the deletion of the VCS metadata for the created project. This is mostly useful if you run the command in non-interactive mode.
dump-autoload
If you need to update the autoloader because of new classes in a classmap package for example, you can use "dump-autoload" to do that without having to go through an install or update.
Additionally, it can dump an optimized autoloader that converts PSR-0/4 packages into classmap ones for performance reasons. In large applications with many classes, the autoloader can take up a substantial portion of every request's time. Using classmaps for everything is less convenient in development, but using this option you can still use PSR-0/4 for convenience and classmaps for performance.
Options
- --optimize (-o): Convert PSR-0/4 autoloading to classmap to get a faster autoloader. This is recommended especially for production, but can take a bit of time to run so it is currently not done by default.
- --no-dev: Disables autoload-dev rules.
clear-cache
Deletes all content from Composer's cache directories.
licenses
Lists the name, version and license of every package installed. Use
--format=json
to get machine readable output.
Options
- --no-dev: Remove dev dependencies from the output
- --format: Format of the output: text or json (default: "text")
run-script
To run scripts manually you can use this command, just give it the script name and optionally --no-dev to disable the dev mode.
diagnose
If you think you found a bug, or something is behaving strangely, you might
want to run the diagnose
command to perform automated checks for many common
problems.
php composer.phar diagnose
archive
This command is used to generate a zip/tar archive for a given package in a given version. It can also be used to archive your entire project without excluded/ignored files.
php composer.phar archive vendor/package 2.0.21 --format=zip
Options
- --format (-f): Format of the resulting archive: tar or zip (default: "tar")
- --dir: Write the archive to this directory (default: ".")
help
To get more information about a certain command, just use help
.
php composer.phar help install
Environment variables
You can set a number of environment variables that override certain settings.
Whenever possible it is recommended to specify these settings in the config
section of composer.json
instead. It is worth noting that the env vars will
always take precedence over the values specified in composer.json
.
COMPOSER
By setting the COMPOSER
env variable it is possible to set the filename of
composer.json
to something else.
For example:
COMPOSER=composer-other.json php composer.phar install
COMPOSER_ROOT_VERSION
By setting this var you can specify the version of the root package, if it can
not be guessed from VCS info and is not present in composer.json
.
COMPOSER_VENDOR_DIR
By setting this var you can make composer install the dependencies into a
directory other than vendor
.
COMPOSER_BIN_DIR
By setting this option you can change the bin
(Vendor Binaries)
directory to something other than vendor/bin
.
http_proxy or HTTP_PROXY
If you are using composer from behind an HTTP proxy, you can use the standard
http_proxy
or HTTP_PROXY
env vars. Simply set it to the URL of your proxy.
Many operating systems already set this variable for you.
Using http_proxy
(lowercased) or even defining both might be preferable since
some tools like git or curl will only use the lower-cased http_proxy
version.
Alternatively you can also define the git proxy using
git config --global http.proxy <proxy url>
.
no_proxy
If you are behind a proxy and would like to disable it for certain domains, you
can use the no_proxy
env var. Simply set it to a comma separated list of
domains the proxy should not be used for.
The env var accepts domains, IP addresses, and IP address blocks in CIDR
notation. You can restrict the filter to a particular port (e.g. :80
). You
can also set it to *
to ignore the proxy for all HTTP requests.
HTTP_PROXY_REQUEST_FULLURI
If you use a proxy but it does not support the request_fulluri flag, then you
should set this env var to false
or 0
to prevent composer from setting the
request_fulluri option.
HTTPS_PROXY_REQUEST_FULLURI
If you use a proxy but it does not support the request_fulluri flag for HTTPS
requests, then you should set this env var to false
or 0
to prevent composer
from setting the request_fulluri option.
COMPOSER_HOME
The COMPOSER_HOME
var allows you to change the composer home directory. This
is a hidden, global (per-user on the machine) directory that is shared between
all projects.
By default it points to /home/<user>/.composer
on *nix,
/Users/<user>/.composer
on OSX and
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Composer
on Windows.
COMPOSER_HOME/config.json
You may put a config.json
file into the location which COMPOSER_HOME
points
to. Composer will merge this configuration with your project's composer.json
when you run the install
and update
commands.
This file allows you to set configuration and repositories for the user's projects.
In case global configuration matches local configuration, the local
configuration in the project's composer.json
always wins.
COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR
The COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR
var allows you to change the composer cache directory,
which is also configurable via the cache-dir
option.
By default it points to $COMPOSER_HOME/cache on *nix and OSX, and
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Composer
(or %LOCALAPPDATA%/Composer
) on Windows.
COMPOSER_PROCESS_TIMEOUT
This env var controls the time composer waits for commands (such as git commands) to finish executing. The default value is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
COMPOSER_DISCARD_CHANGES
This env var controls the discard-changes config option.
COMPOSER_NO_INTERACTION
If set to 1, this env var will make composer behave as if you passed the
--no-interaction
flag to every command. This can be set on build boxes/CI.