Global installation of PHP tools with Composer

PHP composer tools.md

Global installation of PHP tools with Composer

To install a composer package globally, you run the usual require command, but with the addition of the global modifier. So to install PHPUnit, you would run:

$ composer global require phpunit/phpunit
$ composer global require phpunit/dbunit
$ composer global require phing/phing
$ composer global require phpdocumentor/phpdocumentor
$ composer global require sebastian/phpcpd
$ composer global require phploc/phploc
$ composer global require phpmd/phpmd
$ composer global require squizlabs/php_codesniffer

This will install PHPUnit and all its dependencies into the ~/.composer/vendor/ directory and, most importantly, the phpunit CLI tools are installed into ~/.composer/vendor/bin/.

Simply add this directory to your PATH in your ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.bashrc) like this:

export PATH=~/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH

and phpunit is now available on your command line.

To keep your tools up to date, you simply do this:

composer global update

To remove a package, you edit ~/.composer/composer.json and then run composer global update.

export PATH="$(composer config -g home)/vendor/bin:$PATH"

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