Proposal: adding a composer outdated command

[jenssegers]

Hey guys,

When I'm using other package managers, I often use commands like bower list or npm outdated to find out if packages have a newer release, and can be upgraded. However, composer is kind of lacking this functionality. There is the possibility to run the update with the --dry-run option, but that will not tell you if there is a newer version if you have strict versions in composer.json.

Is this something that could be on the roadmap?

[hannesvdvreken]

@jenssegers What does npm outdated do exactly? Will it check if the max version constraint of your dependencies is lower than the newest stable or dev version of that package? Or does it check recursive dependencies as well?

[jenssegers]

I think npm outdated shows both the max version based on version constraints (similar to --dry-run) and the lastest version of the package in general.

[dantman]

Package             Current    Wanted  Latest  Location
lodash                3.3.0     3.3.1   3.3.1  lodash
ms                    0.6.2     0.6.2   0.7.0  debug > ms
chalk                 0.4.0     0.4.0   1.0.0  nomnom > chalk
...

Yes, it shows the current version, highest matching version according to constraints, the latest version you can update to, and it does it for the dependencies of your dependencies too.

[danez]

I also would like to see something like this. I thought about starting a pull request, but this gets kinda complex, at least with no knowledge in composer internals.

[nervo]

👍

[ojhaujjwal]

+1

[watilde]

+1

[Addvilz]

+95

[davidspiess]

i miss this feature a lot!

[hannesvdvreken]

You can actually do composer update --dry-run and watch the output. It gives you a list of all packages (sub dependencies as well) which could be updated. All you gotta do is filter out your first-line dependencies.

[Addvilz]

@hannesvdvreken --dry-run does not give information about packages, versions of which are locked at some version. For example, if package has version 2.5.0 and composer.json has ~2.4.4, we will not receive 2.5.0 update. That is what this proposal is about.

[dnagirl]

yes please!

[OzzyCzech]

+1

[nevvermind]

This could be easily implemented as a plugin if this was in place: #3377

[fedeisas]

+1