Travis-CI: how to cache composer executable between builds?

Question

On every travis build, composer self-update is run. And it gets updated on every build. Is it possible to cache composer executables like we do it with vendor dir via

cache:
  directories:
    - vendor
    - $HOME/.composer/cache

I thought about caching the whole /home/travis/.phpenv/versions/5.5/bin/composer but I feel this is not right because the contents of this folder may change without notifying caching system about a change (when travis updates php version for example).

Any suggestions (except for custom composer, of course)?

Answer 1

I'd recommend not updating composer itself, but let travis handle it. (its automatically updated every 30/60 days)

Also i can recommend using the new containerized infrastructure to speed up the runs and allow caching...

language: php

sudo: false

cache:
  directories:
        - $HOME/.composer/cache

php:
  - 5.5
  - 5.6
  - 7
  - hhvm

install:
  - composer install

script: vendor/bin/phpunit

The sudo: false statement indicates the use of containers. The cache: statement makes sure composer caches correctly.

If you really want to cache the composer binary:

language: php

php:
  - 5.5
  - 5.6
  - 7
  - hhvm

cache:
  directories:
    - $HOME/.composer/cache

install:
  - travis_retry composer self-update && composer --version
  - export PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"
  - travis_retry composer install --prefer-dist --no-interaction

script: vendor/bin/phpunit

Also just as a heads up, if testing for HHVM and you need to set the datetime, have a look at https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-ci/issues/2523. My way of solving this is adding a .ini-file in my test-directory with the datetime and setting this in the correct folder for all test-runners. This is prepended in the install:-step:

  - mkdir -p /home/travis/.phpenv/versions/$(phpenv version-name)/etc/conf.d
  - phpenv config-add test/phpconfig.ini

Anyway, a bit more information than you requested, but i hope this helps someone looking for composer/travis/stuff :)