SilverStripe 3.0 And Composer

[Andrew Short]

As the SilverStripe 3.0 approach nears, a decision that needs to be made is if it is worth partially integrating composer in the 3.0 release as a stopgap solution, or wait for a later release when the work to fully integrate composer can be done. As it's already very late in the release cycle any changes must be minimal.

As such, one possibility would be to bundle something like https://github.com/ajshort/silverstripe-composer-installer with the 3.0 release. This is a simple composer installer which installs packages of type "silverstripe-module" or "silverstripe-widget" to the root directory, and "silverstripe-theme" to the themes directory. Doing this would make it possible to use composer to install packages. However, this would not be a tenable solution: all the tooling around composer such as autoloader integration, namespace support, and various other things wouldn't be present. It would also introduce extra work and backwards compatibility to maintain.

My preference would be to wait until a later release so I can focus on implementing composer fully, rather than having to worry about additionally being backwards compatible with a stopgap solution. However, if enough people would like to see a basic composer integration in the 3.0 release it is an option. Thoughts?

Andrew Short.

[Sam Minnée]

Agreed. 3.0's next release is rc1. Even your stopgap would be quite big for that.

Sam Minnée
CEO
SilverStripe