Nested packages would not be found in local repositories

[Kolyunya]

The problem

My composer.jsons for three projects located in adjacent (all next to each other) local directories are:

{
    "name": "acme/foo",
    "require": {
    },
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../*"
        }
    ]
}

{
    "name": "acme/bar",
    "require": {
        "acme/foo": "dev-master"
    },
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../*"
        }
    ]
}

{
    "name": "acme/baz",
    "require": {
        "acme/bar": "dev-master"
    },
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../*"
        }
    ]
}

Output of composer diagnose:

Checking composer.json: WARNING
No license specified, it is recommended to do so. For closed-source software you may use "proprietary" as license.
require.acme/bar : unbound version constraints (dev-master) should be avoided
Checking platform settings: OK
Checking git settings: OK
Checking http connectivity to packagist: OK
Checking https connectivity to packagist: OK
Checking github.com rate limit: OK
Checking disk free space: OK
Checking pubkeys: FAIL
Missing pubkey for tags verification
Missing pubkey for dev verification
Run composer self-update --update-keys to set them up
Checking composer version: OK
Composer version: 1.10.10
PHP version: 7.4.9
PHP binary path: /usr/bin/php
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1g  21 Apr 2020

When I run this command:

cd foo
composer update
# OK

cd ../bar
composer update
# OK

cd ../baz
composer update
# NOT OK :(

I get the following output:

Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.

  Problem 1
    - Installation request for acme/bar dev-master -> satisfiable by acme/bar[dev-master].
    - acme/bar dev-master requires acme/foo dev-master -> no matching package found.

Potential causes:
 - A typo in the package name
 - The package is not available in a stable-enough version according to your minimum-stability setting
   see <https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md#minimum-stability> for more details.
 - It's a private package and you forgot to add a custom repository to find it

Read <https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/troubleshooting.md> for further common problems.

And I expected this to happen: acme/foo is found in the ../* repository.

Failed attempts to fix the problem

Things I've tried:

• Defining a separate repository for each package.
• Using absolute repository paths.
• Disabling symlinks.

None of these worked.

Workarounds

I was able to find one workaround which I find a bit dirty. It turns out that if you require both acme/foo and acme/bar then the dependencies would resolve normally.

Important observations

• When first installing via symlinks and then disabling them, composer update would not mirror the package. It will remain symlinked. This may be considered as a separate issue.

[Seldaek]

Seems like a case of https://getcomposer.org/doc/faqs/why-can%27t-composer-load-repositories-recursively.md