Composer bin plugin — Isolate your bin dependencies

Table of Contents

1. Why?
2. How does this plugin work?
3. Installation
4. Usage
   1. Example
   2. The all bin namespace
   3. What happens when symlink conflicts?
5. Tips
   1. Auto-installation
   2. Disable links
   3. Change directory
   4. Reduce clutter
6. Related plugins

Why?

In PHP, with Composer, your dependencies are flattened, which might result in conflicts. Most of the time those conflicts are legitimate and should be properly resolved. However you may have dev tools that you want to manage via Composer for convenience, but should not influence your project dependencies or for which conflicts don't make sense. For example: EtsyPhan and PhpMetrics. Installing one of those static analysis tools should not change your application dependencies, neither should it be a problem to install both of them at the same time.

How does this plugin work?

It allows you to install your bin vendors in isolated locations, and still link them to your bin-dir (if you want to).

This is done by registering a bin command, which can be used to run Composer commands inside a namespace.

Installation

# Globally
$ composer global require bamarni/composer-bin-plugin

# In your project
$ composer require --dev bamarni/composer-bin-plugin

Usage

$ composer bin [namespace] [composer_command]
$ composer global bin [namespace] [composer_command]

Example

Let's install Behat and PhpSpec inside a bdd bin namespace, EtsyPhan in etsy-phan and PhpMetrics in phpmetrics:

$ composer bin bdd require behat/behat phpspec/phpspec
$ composer bin etsy-phan require etsy/phan
$ composer bin phpmetrics require phpmetrics/phpmetrics

This command creates the following directory structure :

.
├── composer.json
├── composer.lock
├── vendor/
│   └── bin
│       ├── behat -> ../../vendor-bin/bdd/vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat
│       ├── phpspec -> ../../vendor-bin/bdd/vendor/phpspec/phpspec/bin/phpspec
│       ├── phan -> ../../vendor-bin/etsy-phan/vendor/etsy/phan/phan
│       └── phpmetrics -> ../../vendor-bin/phpmetrics/vendor/phpmetrics/phpmetrics/bin/phpmetrics
└── vendor-bin/
    └── bdd
    │   ├── composer.json
    │   ├── composer.lock
    │   └── vendor/
    │       ├── behat/
    │       ├── phpspec/
    │       └── ...
    └── etsy-phan
    │   ├── composer.json
    │   ├── composer.lock
    │   └── vendor/
    │       ├── etsy/
    │       └── ...
    └── phpmetrics
        ├── composer.json
        ├── composer.lock
        └── vendor/
            ├── phpmetrics/
            └── ...

You can continue to run vendor/bin/behat, vendor/bin/phpspec and co. as before but they will be properly isolated. Also, composer.json and composer.lock files in each namespace will allow you to take advantage of automated dependency management as normally provided by Composer.

The all bin namespace

The all bin namespace has a special meaning. It runs a command for all existing bin namespaces. For instance, the following command would update all your bins :

$ composer bin all update
Changed current directory to vendor-bin/phpspec
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files
Changed current directory to vendor-bin/phpunit
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files

What happens when symlink conflicts?

If we take the case described in the example section, there might be more binaries linked due to the dependencies. For example PhpMetrics depends on Nikic PHP-Parser and as such you will also have php-parse in .vendor/bin/:

.
├── composer.json
├── composer.lock
├── vendor/
│   └── bin
│       ├── phpmetrics -> ../../vendor-bin/phpmetrics/vendor/phpmetrics/phpmetrics/bin/phpmetrics
│       └── php-parse -> ../../vendor-bin/phpmetrics/vendor/nikic/PHP-Parser/bin/php-parsee
└── vendor-bin/
    └── phpmetrics
        ├── composer.json
        ├── composer.lock
        └── vendor/
            ├── phpmetrics/
            ├── nikic/
            └── ...

But what happens if another bin-namespace has a dependency using Nikic PHP-Parser? In that situation symlinks would collides and are not created (only the colliding ones).

Tips

Auto-installation

For convenience, you can add the following script in your composer.json :

{
    "scripts": {
        "bin": "echo 'bin not installed'",
        "post-install-cmd": ["@composer bin all install --ansi"],
        "post-update-cmd": ["@composer bin all update --ansi"]
    }
}

This makes sure all your bins are installed during composer install and updated during composer update.

Disable links

By default, binaries of the sub namespaces are linked to the root one like described in example. If you wish to disable that behaviour, you can do so by adding a little setting in the extra config:

{
    "extra": {
        "bamarni-bin": {
            "bin-links": false
        }
    }
}

Change directory

By default, the packages are looked for in the vendor-bin directory. The location can be changed using target-directory value in the extra config:

{
    "extra": {
        "bamarni-bin": {
            "target-directory": "ci/vendor"
        }
    }
}

Reduce clutter

You can add following line to your .gitignore file in order to avoid committing dependencies of your tools.

/vendor-bin/**/vendor

Updating each tool can create many not legible changes in composer.lock files. You can use .gitattributes file in order to inform git that it shouldn't show diffs of composer.lock files.

vendor-bin/**/composer.lock binary

Related plugins

• theofidry/composer-inheritance-plugin: Opinionated version of Wikimedia composer-merge-plugin to work in pair with this plugin.