Composer: required packages with differing levels of minimum-stability

Question

I have a composer file for a laravel installation with the following composer.json file:

{     "name": "laravel/laravel",     "description": "The Laravel Framework.",     "keywords": ["framework", "laravel"],     "license": "MIT",     "require": {         "laravel/framework": "4.1.*"     },     "autoload": {         "classmap": [             "app/commands",             "app/controllers",             "app/models",             "app/database/migrations",             "app/database/seeds",             "app/tests/TestCase.php"         ]     },     "scripts": {         "post-install-cmd": [             "php artisan clear-compiled",             "php artisan optimize"         ],         "post-update-cmd": [             "php artisan clear-compiled",             "php artisan optimize"         ],         "post-create-project-cmd": [             "php artisan key:generate"         ]     },     "config": {         "preferred-install": "dist"     },     "minimum-stability": "stable" } 

I'm trying to add in the bundle for sentry. On sentry's website it says I can install it by adding the following to my composer.json file:

{     "require": {         "cartalyst/sentry": "2.0.*"     },     "minimum-stability": "dev" } 

I tried adding the new json object at the end of the current laravel one like so:

... }, {     "require": {         "cartalyst/sentry": "2.0.*"     },     "minimum-stability": "dev" } 

When I run the composer update command to load the new package I get an error saying that the new object addition is not valid json.

If I add the cartalyst/sentry to the existing require object it cannot find the sentry package because the existing requires have a minimum-stability value of stable.

Is there a way of specifying the sentry package in a separate require object that has the minimum-stability setting of dev?

Answer 1

The answer is just add @dev

{     "require": {         "cartalyst/sentry": "2.0.*@dev"     }, } 

You can read more about minimum stability settings here.

An alternative is to set your minimum-stability to dev, but tell composer you want to use stable whenever possible:

"minimum-stability": "dev", "prefer-stable" : true 

This basically means it will always use stable UNLESS there is no way to install a stable dependency, and therefore use dev.