Working on forked GitHub repository through Compos

Question

I hope my question is not too vague, but can't get a proper answer by searching.

I have the following situation; We are working on a project and have certain dependencies installed through Composer. One of these dependencies is quite outdated and requires some fixes and additions. I have forked this repo on GitHub and added it to Packagist.

To work on the code, I need it running in my project and edit from there to see if my changes work, but it is in the vendor folder, where it is installed through composer.

Cloning this project through GitHub directly in the vendor folder won't work, as the autoloader won't be written for it.

What I have done so far is working in the vendor folder, and then copying and pasting my work from there to the GitHub folder and pushing from there, but logistically quite tricky.

How does one work on a composer library that is embedded in a project, in such a way that you can commit your changes from this folder?

Answer 1

1. Change package constraint in composer.json to use branch instead of tagged version - you can use dev-master for master branch or dev-my-branch for my-branch branch. You may also configure branch alias.

   "require": {
       "some-vendor/some-package": "dev-master",
   }
   

2. Add a repository which points to your fork:

   "repositories": [
       {
           "type": "git",
           "url": "https://github.com/richard/some-package/"
       },
   ]
   

3. Run composer update to install new version from your fork (or composer require "some-vendor/some-package:dev-master" if you don't want to update any other dependencies).

Now you should have sources cloned from your fork in vendor/some-vendor/some-package. You can edit these files and test if changes fits to your app. After you finish your work:

1. Commit changes in your fork and push them to GitHub.
2. Go back to root of your app and run composer update or composer require "some-vendor/some-package:dev-master". This will update your composer.lock file to use latest version of your fork. Then commit changes in your lock and push.

Now if someone will clone your project (or just pull changes) it will get new composer.lock pointing to your fork with specified commit hash - composer install should always install the same version of your fork directly from GitHub.