How to ignore directories with Composer?

Question

I'd like to release a PHP library and submit it on Packagist to have it installable via Composer.

My library has the following structure:

lib/ tests/ composer.json README.md 

Basically, whenever I include this library in a project's composer.json, I'd like everything to be copied with the exception of the tests directory, which is cumbersome and is only needed when developing the library itself. It's just a waste of space otherwise (especially when packaging the project for production).

Is it possible to exclude this directory from the library's composer.json?

Answer 1

This is not possible in Composer. However, there are some ways to do it:

• When you run the update or install command with --prefer-dist, Composer tries to download the archive on github. You can remove the test directory from the archives by putting this in a .gitattributes file in the root directory of your project:

  Tests/ export-ignore 

• Composer will only use the tags on github. Just temporary remove the tests directory when creating a tag will also do the trick.

Answer 2

It's possible to control the archive creation by adding exclude patterns in the composer.json file within the archive key. See https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md#archive for details.

The example given (cited from above URL):

{     "archive": {         "exclude": ["/foo/bar", "baz", "/*.test", "!/foo/bar/baz"]     } } 

The example will include /dir/foo/bar/file, /foo/bar/baz, /file.php, /foo/my.test but it will exclude /foo/bar/any, /foo/baz, and /my.test.

That way you have about the same control that .gitattributes would give you, without having to use Git or affecting any processes that require different settings in said file.