How to Use Composer on Kualo Servers

Knowledgebase Article

How to Use Composer on Kualo Servers

Composer is a popular dependency manager for PHP that allows you to manage your project's libraries and dependencies, and also facilitates autoloading of your project classes. At Kualo, we offer both major versions of Composer pre-installed to cater to your specific needs:

composer for Composer version 1.x
composer2 for Composer version 2.x

Typing one of the above commands when logged into SSH will allow you to use either version.

This article will guide you through the process of setting up Composer and configuring it according to your project's requirements.

Choosing the Right Composer Version

Before you proceed, it's important to know which version of Composer your project requires. Some older projects may still rely on Composer 1.x, while most new projects would benefit from the improved performance and features of Composer 2.x.

Setting Up a Bash Alias for Composer

If your PHP software or scripts are hardcoded to use composer but require version 2.x, you can set up a Bash alias to point composer to composer2.

Steps:

SSH into your account: Use an SSH client to log in to your hosting account.
Navigate to the root directory: Once logged in, navigate to the root directory of your account.
Edit the .bashrc file: Use a text editor like nano or vim to open the .bashrc file. If the file doesn't exist, you can create it.


nano ~/.bashrc

Add the alias: Scroll to the bottom of the .bashrc file and add the following line:


alias composer='/usr/local/bin/composer2'

Save and exit: Save the changes and exit the text editor.
Activate the changes: To make the alias take effect, either restart your SSH session or run the following command:


source ~/.bashrc

Defining Composer Binary Location in Application

If your application allows you to specify the location of the Composer binary, you can set it to /usr/local/bin/composer2. This will direct the application to use Composer 2.x without needing to set up a Bash alias.