Developing composer packages locally (especially when working in teams) throws up some interesting workflow challenges that we have been wanting to address for a while.

A common workflow for us is one that involves working on package changes at the same time as making changes to an application. We have tried a number of different techniques to try and streamline this, including a composer merge plugin, a workbench package and local composer repositories, each with their own pros and cons.

Having finally sat down and thought about the problem at hand, we came up with a pretty simple solution that we're happy with - at least for now, anyway.

In a nutshell, we have created a simple bash script, which we put inside ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc. There are four commands; dir, status, link and unlink.

packages()
{
    command="$1"
    name="$2"
    vendor_dir="vendor/$name"
    if [ "$3" ]; then base_dir="$3"; else base_dir="~/Sites/packages/"; fi
    dir="$base_dir$name"

    if [ -z $command ]; then
        echo "Enter a command: dir, status, link, unlink"
        return
    fi

    case $command in
        "dir" )
            if [ $name ]; then eval cd $dir; else eval cd $base_dir; fi
            ;;

        "status" )
            if [ -z $name ]; then
                echo "Which package would you like to check the status of?"
            else
                if [[ -L $vendor_dir ]]; then
                    symlink_target=$(readlink $vendor_dir)
                    echo "Package is linked in from $symlink_target"
                else
                    echo "Package is not linked."
                fi
            fi
            ;;

        "link" )
            if [ -z $name ]; then
                echo "Which package would you like to link in?"
            else
                rm -rf $vendor_dir
                eval ln -sf $dir $vendor_dir
                symlink_target=$(readlink $vendor_dir)
                composer dump-autoload --optimize
                echo "Package has been linked in from $symlink_target"
            fi
            ;;

        "unlink" )
            if [ -z $name ]; then
                echo "Which package would you like to unlink?"
            else
                rm -rf $vendor_dir
                composer update --prefer-dist $name
                echo "Package has been unlinked and installed from dist."
            fi
            ;;
    esac
}

dir

"dir" allows us to easily "cd" to the package source directory within ~/Sites/packages/

packages dir webhappens/prismic

status

"status" should be run from the application root and will report whether the package has been linked in via a symlink or not.

packages status webhappens/prismic

link

"link" should be run from the application root and will generate a symlink inside the "vendor" folder to the package source directory within ~/Sites/packages/

packages link webhappens/prismic

Note that the folder structure inside here must be the same as in the "vendor" folder.

An optional third argument may be passed to change the default directory from ~/Sites/packages/ to something else, if required.

unlink

"unlink" should be run from the application root and switches the "vendor" folder back to using the dist version of the package.

packages unlink webhappens/prismic

I hope you find this helpful, feel free to tweet me with any questions or additional ideas.

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