gistfile1.txt

I have an app that is using 5 different packages that are available via our own local Satis repo.

I have one main repo that has a composer.json file that installs the 5 packages. However, I need
to keep working on code in those individual packages (which are now installed in <main repo>/vendor and 
grouped under company name:

ie

vendor/company/package-1/
vendor/company/package-2/

What is the best way to make this workable to allow easy development work?

Clone the packages somewhere, create a dev/feature branch, work on them on their own, push changes & reference the repo+branch instead of statis+version in your composer.json

https://getcomposer.org/doc/05-repositories.md#loading-a-package-from-a-vcs-repository

Use --prefer-source when composer install'ing them. You can then cd into the individual package directories under vendor/, modify as needed, then commit directly from there.

Pretty much the same way you work with any external dependency that is under active development:

• use fuzzy selectors, like ~1.3 that will install any 1.3.x version, preferably the latests.
• tag your dependencies, every time you want your changes to be propagated to your main app. If tagging is cumbersome, just use dev-master as your version constraint.

Bonus:

Composer is able to install these dependencies using git clone (using --prefer-dist) instead of downloading a simple gz file. This way you can update your dependency local code, commit and push it (and tag it), then run php composer.phar update my/dependency and ensure everything is working fine.

if you use --prefer-source, they get checkout out via git/svn, so you can commit from them. But you need to be careful, I heard from cases, where the changes got discarded trough execution of composer update, even if you dont continue when get asked