Composer system requirements and recommendations - potentially unclear? #12278

jnoordsij · 2025-01-13T15:35:09Z

jnoordsij
Jan 13, 2025

Based on the discussion (and slight confusion) in php/pie#168, I was looking for a proper source for which (hard) requirements are in place to use Composer, versus which recommendations there are for extended/improved functionality. After doing some digging, I found some (minor) inconsistencies and was wondering if my analysis is both correct and on what follow-ups might come from it.

I looked into the following sources:

The documentation on System Requirements lists various (command) tools that are practically required for functionality.
The suggest key in composer.json suggests some extensions to be installed.
The official Dockerfile which showcases a "complete" installation in practice.

Based on this, if I'm understanding things correctly, I think the following things are potentially confusing and thus could be changed:

The list of suggested PHP extensions in composer.json seems to be misleading and incomplete to me.
1. The message for ext-zip says "Enabling the zip extension allows you to unzip archives", however it seems that in practice using the command unzip is preferred over using the zip extension for this, so probably the wording "... to create zip archives" is more appropriate?
2. The bz2 extension is installed in the official Dockerfile, however not present here. Probably this should be added?
The documentation makes no mention of PHP extensions (as required to be installed). However it seems that it might be worth mentioning there that some PHP extensions are recommended (or even required for some applications) to be present when using composer, to be on par with the observations above.
The Dockerfile seems to add some packages (e.g. openssh-client and patch), which are not listed in the documentation as system requirements, but might be relevant there?
Finally the Docker image documentation is very brief in that it does not list any further requirements on tools to be installed in the image you create to be present to ensure composer works properly. Probably some reference to either the system requirements and/or the packages installed in the official image as guide might be helpful.

If these suggestions hold merit and you agree with my suggestion, please let me know and I'd be willing to draft up MRs for them!

Seldaek · 2025-01-13T16:18:12Z

Seldaek
Jan 13, 2025
Maintainer

If system unzip isn't available, ext-unzip will be used, so it's not untrue but maybe should be reworded. bz2 is not really used by 99% of people I think. Not sure why it's in the docker setup.
Not sure which you mean, I guess curl would be definitely highly recommended, but aside from that I don't think there's much?
No clue why those are there, except perhaps for git to function?
yes..

I'd say please feel free to send a PR then we can work together on the exact wording.

0 replies

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Composer system requirements and recommendations - potentially unclear? #12278

Uh oh!

{{title}}

Uh oh!

Replies: 1 comment

Uh oh!

{{title}}

Uh oh!

Select a reply

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Composer system requirements and recommendations - potentially unclear? #12278

Uh oh!

jnoordsij Jan 13, 2025

Replies: 1 comment

Uh oh!

Seldaek Jan 13, 2025 Maintainer

jnoordsij
Jan 13, 2025

Seldaek
Jan 13, 2025
Maintainer