Composer - Downloading git repos that don't have composer.json

Question

I'm trying to use composer in Symfony 2.1 to pull down vendors from github libraries that are not composer aware and probably never will be.

For examples: Old Deps file:

[jQuery]
git=git://github.com/jquery/jquery.git
version=1.8.1

[Mocha]
git=https://github.com/visionmedia/mocha.git

Composer (doesn't work)

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "package",
        "package": {
            "name": "jquery",
            "version": "1.8.1",
            "dist": {
                "url": "git://github.com/jquery/jquery.git",
                "type": "git"
            }
        }
    }
],
"require": {
    "jquery": "1.8.1"
}

Answer 1

If you are downloading from git, you need to specify a "source" package, not a "dist" package. Use:

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "package",
        "package": {
            "name": "jquery",
            "version": "1.8.1",
            "source": {
                "url": "git://github.com/jquery/jquery.git",
                "type": "git",
                "reference": "1.8.1"
            }
        }
    }
],
"require": {
    "jquery": "1.8.1"
}

Answer 2

Another option is to useBowerfor front end package management and only use composer for what it was designed for. (PHP packages).

http://bower.io/