Converting a Composer dependency to git for editing

I’m adding a new feature to ZF’s Problem-Details component and it’s easiest to do this within the context of the application I’m developing.

The component lives in vendor/zendframework/zend-problem-details and was installed using composer require so doesn’t have its own git repository as the distribution zip file was used to install it.

To change it to a git repository, we can use the --prefer-source option and specify a branch like this:

$ composer require --prefer-source zendframework/zend-problem-details:dev-master

I now have a git checkout of the component with two remotes: origin and composer. I changed origin to my fork and then create a branch to work on:

$ cd vendor/zendframework/zend-problem-details
$ git remote rm origin
$ git remote add origin git@github.com:akrabat/zend-problem-details.git
$ git checkout -b my-new-feature

We’re now off the races and I can easily develop my new feature and push to origin as normal and then hopefully raise a PR.

This article was posted on 4 October 2017 in PHP

3 thoughts on “Converting a Composer dependency to git for editing”

Can you list your git remotes before "git remote rm origin" and after the "git checkout". Whats the point of having a remote for Composer (which I assume is pointing to the same thing Origin points to initially). For development dont you want the –prefer-source to be the new repo youre doing work on, namely github.com:akrabat/zend-problem-details.git ?

Rob says:

4 October 2017 at 4:31 pm

Dgurba,

My fork doesn't have a packagist registration so composer require won't find it unless I mess with composer.json. Hence it's easier to –prefer-source on the real version and then just swap the origin remote to point at my fork. It follows that my fork is already synced to the main version.