Can't get composer “path” repository to work

Question

I have a directory structure like so:

composer.json < Main
  packages/
    balunker/
      testpackage/
        composer.json < Package
        src/
          TestPackage.php

The main composer.json looks like this:

{
    "name": "vagrant/composer-test",
    "repositories": [
        {
             "type": "path",
            "url": "packages/*/*"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "balunker/testpackage": "*"
    }
}

While the package composer.json looks like so:

{
  "name": "balunker/testpackage",
  "autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
      "Balunker\\": "src/"
    }
  }
}

On composer update I simple get a message that the package could not be resolved. No symlinks are created and no package is installed. I have literally spent half of my day figuring this out, without any success.

I also uploaded a composer update -vvv verbose output of this: http://pastebin.com/mMRHsACk.

My composer version is the latest (as of 20th of April 2016 at 2:39pm UTC) and all of this is running inside Vagrant (Debian).

ANY recommendation from hereon is greatly appreciated. I really don't know what else to do any more.

Answer 1

I posted the issue on Github as well and it turns out that the documentation is a little misleading. It says:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../../packages/my-package"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "my/package": "*"
    }
}

However, if you just have a local repo without releases, you have to use:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../../packages/my-package"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "my/package": "dev-master"
    }
}

The version dev-master is the key here (given that you are working on the master branch). This was mildly infuriating, but thanks to some helpful composer contributors, I could finally get a grip on this.

I hope this may help somebody in the future.

Good luck!

Answer 2

What worked for me was very similar to the above, but I had to specifically target the branch I was developing on.

Assuming code in directory /newapp on the same level as /app, and a branch named feature/the-new-package:

"repositories": [
  {
    "type": "path",
    "url": "newapp"
  }
],
"require": {
  "package/newapp": "dev-feature/the-new-package"
},

\* did not work, neither did dev-master. It had to be dev-feature/the-new-package.

Answer 3

For future Googlers, add your version to the composer.json and then require the package with the --prefer-source option.

For example: composer require your-vendor/package:1.0.* --prefer-source

Answer 4

What helped me resolve was composer clear-cache and then running composer update.

Explanation: I had initially tried to composer install my/package which failed on dependency versions. So I needed to make some local modifications to make it work with Laravel 6.0. However, it continued checking for the wrong version of Laravel packages which led me to believe it was not seeing my local repository which I set in the repositories key with "type": "path". I first ensured the path existed and I was on the correct branch (master which is why I use dev-master in my composer.json). Once I cleared the composer cache and ran the update it updated using my local path with no dependency issues.

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "path",
        "url": "../libs/package-name"
    }
],
"require-dev": {
    "pkg-maintainer/package-name": "dev-master"
}