elegantthemes / github-archive-installer
A custom Composer installer that will install a dependency from a GitHub release archive .zip file when installing from distribution.
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Type:composer-plugin
pkg:composer/elegantthemes/github-archive-installer
Requires
- composer-plugin-api: ^2.1.0
Requires (Dev)
- composer/composer: ^2.0
This package is not auto-updated.
Last update: 2025-10-16 13:24:20 UTC
README
A custom Composer installer that will install a dependency from a GitHub release archive .zip file when installing from distribution.
Why You Need It
It is very common that you might have a number of development only files in your code library source files. Unless explicitly installing from source, you generally don't need to have development only files in your final distribution. You may also want to perform some specific build steps such as building some production-ready JavaScript files. This installer allows you to keep generated code out of your repository while still being able to reliably deliver it in your final distribution.
Using a tool like Travis CI, you can automate the build of your final distribution and automatically attach the generated .zip file to the release on GitHub. Then, using this installer, you can easily configure your library to install the generated .zip file when installing as dist in Composer.
How it Works
Any package with a direct dependency on elegantthemes/github-archive-installer and a valid stable version number being installed from distribution will be installed from the GitHub archive <repo-name>.zip file associated with a specific release.
For example, if my Composer package is named elegantthemes/hello-world then my generated .zip file should be named hello-world.zip in order to be properly installed using this installer.
This installer only changes the distUrl for the package in Composer. It doesn't override any existing installers that work based off of the type property in your composer.json file. For example, if you have a package of type wordpress-plugin your package would still install in the correct location in WordPress. However, when installing from dist it would simply pull from the .zip file attached to your GitHub release.
Options
The following options can be included in composer.json to customize how the dist download URL is generated
| Option | Description | Default Value | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| extra.dist-url-override.org-name | GitHub org/user name | The part of the composer package name before the "/". | elegantthemes |
| extra.dist-url-override.repo-name | GitHub repo name | The part of the composer package name after the "/". | github-archive-installer |
| extra.dist-url-override.file-name | GitHub release file name. If included, the pattern <VERSION> will be replaced with the current version. |
${repo-name}.zip |
github-archive-installer.zip |
The generated dist download URL will look like this: https://github.com/${org-name}/${repo-name}/releases/download/${version}/${filename}