History: Composer
Preview of version: 30
SVN updates (for all versions of Tiki) will stop in January 2023. This coincides with when Tiki18 reaches end of life. However, even if you use another version (like Tiki 21x) from SVN, you will stop getting updates because the Git and SVN combined workflow will be retired. You should get your updates from Git. See also: Tiki Version control history.
Composer is a Software Dependency Manager for PHP, which is heavily used by Tiki.
Composer
- Official website: https://getcomposer.org/
- Package repositories:
- Main: https://packagist.org/
- Secondary: https://asset-packagist.org (after considering other options)
- Tiki uses Composer to manage 150+ library dependencies in PHP and JavaScript, which are bundled as part of the regular Tiki install.
- Superfluous code is removed via CleanVendors
- Starting in Tiki18, there is a web-based tool to install Packages, which permits to manage even more libraries. This is to provide easy access to dependencies that are not shipped as part of the standard Tiki installation.
- cweagans/composer-patches is used to patch dependencies. This is usually used until a patch is incorporated in a released version of a library
- the patches should be versioned as binary files, to avoid problems with line breaks
- The Tiki community runs its own instance of Satis, a Simple static Composer repository generator. Source: satis.json, web: http://composer.tiki.org
- Picking and maintaining dependencies is a critical skill because https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z09jq/why_your_software_project_will_slowly_die_without/
- Here are guidelines for what should be available via Tiki Packages vs built-in to Tiki directly, as we are careful to manage complexity and avoid the worst of dependency hell, as explained at https://pluginproblems.com
- Developers coordinate here: https://dev.tiki.org/Composer
History
- Tiki started in 2002, and there was no such tool to manage dependencies
- The first release of Composer was in 2012.
- In 2013, Tiki started using Composer and progressively porting dependencies (instead using SVN externals)
- From 2014 to 2017: dependencies are progressively migrated to Composer
- In 2017, Composer usage in Tiki was revamped and a web-based Composer tool was added -> Packages
- In 2018, we added support for asset-packagist.org for when dependencies are not on Packagist.org but only NPM or Bower.
- In 2018, a simple way to install packages via FTP: https://packages.tiki.org/
- In 2021, we moved to Composer v2, in time for Tiki23 so it will be nice and robust for Tiki24LTS
- In 2021, it was announced that Composer 2.2 is LTS
Troubleshooting Composer
Please visit https://dev.tiki.org/Composer if you are getting an error about Composer or about a package managed with Composer.