Composer

Intro edit

Composer is one of many Dependency managers. Composer makes it easier to distribute PHP code that relies on other code.

in MediaWiki edit

mw:Composer is used in the MediaWiki engine to manage all core libraries and dependencies since version 1.25

Installation edit

Installing it on your own host would look something like this

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
# now you can use it to do things like install the latest version of Drush
composer global require drush/drush:dev-master

while installing it on a shared host like WebFaction would be slightly modified

ln -s `which php54` ~/bin/php
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php54
mv composer.phar ~/bin/composer
echo -e '\n# Composer\nalias composer="php54 $HOME/composer.phar"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
which composer
# now you can use it to do things like install the latest version of Drush
composer global require drush/drush:dev-master
drush --version

More edit

To use Composer in your PHP project, see this primer, and also this handy-dandy cheatsheet (with mouseovers!)