kubawerlos/composer-require-better

This package is abandoned and no longer maintained. No replacement package was suggested.

Provides a command to require package with constraint having patch version

v1.5.0 2022-04-02 09:14 UTC

Requires

• php: ^7.4 || ^8.0
• composer-plugin-api: ^2.0.0

Requires (Dev)

• composer/composer: ^2.0.0
• phpunit/phpunit: ^9.5.20

MIT

• Kuba Werłos

• cli
• plugin
• composer
• require

README

This repository is abandoned, use composer bump instead.

Plugin for Composer to require package with constraint having patch version.

Installation

composer global require kubawerlos/composer-require-better

Usage

composer rb vendor/package

All Composer's require options (except prefer-lowest and prefer-stable) can be used.

Motivation

Let's assume we want to install package acme-corporation/adding-machine for our project and it has versions 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 released. Usually, we run:

composer require acme-corporation/adding-machine

We will have the latest version installed (1.0.1) and constraint ^1.0 added to composer.json. The constraint means all version from 1.0.0, but lower than 2.0.0 are allowed.

This can result in some problems in the future:

1. If we would want to install another package, that allows acme-corporation/adding-machine only in version 1.0.0 (or has a conflict with acme-corporation/adding-machine version 1.0.1) it would result with acme-corporation/adding-machine being downgraded to version 1.0.0 - we can easily miss that downgrade (as it will be one line in the console) - what if 1.0.1 fixes critical bug for us?
2. If we run composer update --prefer-lowest (quite often practice when developing a library) we would end up with acme-corporation/adding-machine in version 1.0.0.
3. Command composer update could take a long time to run when having many packages with many allowed versions (e.g. Symfony 3 LTS has current version 3.4.38, so constraint ^3.4 is allowing 39 versions - from 3.4.0 to 3.4.38).

So instead we can run:

composer rb acme-corporation/adding-machine

We will have the latest version installed - the same as with require command, but the constraint added to composer.json will be ^1.0.1 - it would mean all version from 1.0.0, but lower than 2.0.0 are allowed. What would that change?

1. If we would want to install the package that previously downgraded acme-corporation/adding-machine we would see an error and would have to make a decision - is this acceptable to us or we cannot allow it?
2. Running composer update --prefer-lowest would do nothing for the package as now installed version is the lowest allowed with the constraint.
3. Command composer update would work faster - mentioned Symfony 3 LST constraint would be ^3.4.38, so it would allow only single version, not 39 versions.
4. In composer.json we now have the installed version as the constraint, so we don't have to check with composer show or in composer.lock (if we even have it in the repository) which version is used in the project.