Overview

Composer offers a path repository type that lets you load packages from a local directory. This makes it easy to tweak code quickly and commit changes directly to your project’s VCS. The official docs for path repositories can feel a bit abstract, so this guide walks through every step using InfyOmLabs/laravel-generator as an example.

1. Bring the Package into Your Project

Add laravel-generator to your local packages directory any way you like. Here we’ll use git clone.

Run the following from the project root:

mkdir packages
cd packages
git clone https://github.com/InfyOmLabs/laravel-generator.git

Result:

2. Update composer.json

Use a path repository entry under repositories in composer.json to point to the local package.
See the official explanation here.
We’ll map the package to packages/laravel-generator.

{
  "repositories": [
    {
      "type": "path",
      "url": "packages/laravel-generator"
    }
  ]
}

Make sure you only update the repositories section, as shown below:

3. Require the Package

Run composer require to load the package. This command adds infyomlabs/laravel-generator:*@dev to composer.json, installs dependencies, and updates composer.lock.

For more about composer require, see The Right Way to Install Composer Packages.

composer require "infyomlabs/laravel-generator:*@dev"

TIP

The *@dev suffix is critical.

You should see output similar to:

If you’re adding a brand-new package, you can stop here.

4. Switch an Existing Package to the path Repository

If you originally installed the package using another repository type and now want to switch to path, first remove it:

composer remove infyomlabs/laravel-generator

Then follow the steps above to reinstall it from the local path.

How It Works

Composer creates a directory symlink so that vendor/infyomlabs/laravel-generator points to packages/laravel-generator, as shown below:

---

TIP

Article republished from: Composer Load Third-Party Packages from a Local Path