Use Local Repository with Composer

This article covers how to use a local vcs repository with Composer.

When developing composer packages it can be painful to commit and push (to Github for instance) for each change we have done then update composer for the project we are requiring that package. It is even worth when we just want to test the package. A good solution is to require the package as a local repository.

Update your composer.json with the following:

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "vcs",
        "url": "/your/local/repository/acme/package/"
    }
],

Update composer to pull from your local repository.

composer update
// or
composer update acme/package

It is still time consuming to composer update each time a change is done. We can use a symbolic link to save some time.

Inside the project vendor/ directory of the project requiring your package, remove the package directory if it already exists and create a symbolic link instead:

cd project/vendor/
rm -rf acme/
mkdir acme
cd acme
ln -s /your/local/repository/acme/package /path/to/project/vendor/acme/package

Update your package source code and it will be available inside your project without any additional steps. Of course this is for developing and testing only. Beware, as soon as you will run a new composer update command it may lead to some troubles. The best is to remove the symbolic link before, then run the composer update command and re-create the symbolic link just after. Not that bad!

Bonus

As I do, you probably use a Vagrant virtual machine? Maybe Laravel Homestead? Here is a little trick to not stay stuck. Put your packages inside your shared folder because it won't like symbolic links outside of it...

Happy coding.