Is composer outdated command supposed to have this behavior ?

[llaville]

Hello,

While I have a look on one of my project that have not changes since months, I tried to run composer outdated command on a previous installation, and I was confused by the message I got No dependencies installed. Try running composer install or update.

Reading ./composer.json (/shared/backups/bartlett/sarif-php-sdk/composer.json)
Loading config file ./composer.json (/shared/backups/bartlett/sarif-php-sdk/composer.json)
Checked CA file /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt does not exist or it is not a file.
Checked directory /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt does not exist or it is not a directory.
Checked CA file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt: valid
Executing command (/shared/backups/bartlett/sarif-php-sdk): 'git' 'branch' '-a' '--no-color' '--no-abbrev' '-v'
Failed to initialize global composer: Composer could not find the config file: /home/devilbox/.composer/composer.json

Reading ./composer.lock (/shared/backups/bartlett/sarif-php-sdk/composer.lock)
Reading /shared/backups/bartlett/sarif-php-sdk/vendor/composer/installed.json
Running 2.6.6 (2023-12-08 18:32:26) with PHP 8.1.26 on Linux / 5.15.90.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
No dependencies installed. Try running composer install or update.

Is it supposed to be this behavior when package as no other dependencies than PHP and extensions requirements ?

composer.lock

{
    "_readme": [
        "This file locks the dependencies of your project to a known state",
        "Read more about it at https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md#installing-dependencies",
        "This file is @generated automatically"
    ],
    "content-hash": "08ee859371057b72ceb81f947ea3f4d6",
    "packages": [],
    "packages-dev": [],
    "aliases": [],
    "minimum-stability": "stable",
    "stability-flags": [],
    "prefer-stable": true,
    "prefer-lowest": false,
    "platform": {
        "php": "^7.1 || ^8.0",
        "ext-json": "*",
        "ext-pcre": "*",
        "ext-spl": "*"
    },
    "platform-dev": [],
    "plugin-api-version": "2.6.0"
}

vendor/composer/installed.json

{
    "packages": [],
    "dev": true,
    "dev-package-names": []
}

[javaDeveloperKid]

PHP version or ext-* is not a package so Composer cannot check this.

[llaville]

I know that, but the message may lead to a confusion, and require to read to composer.json to see that there are no packages defined inside !

[javaDeveloperKid]

Nobody runs Composer outdated with no knowledge about project's dependencies. If the output message bothers you then you can come up with a PR. Changing a message string is a very simple change everyone can do.

[Seldaek]

Fixed in 12ed217