Ruleset not registering with PHP_CodeSniffer

[threadi]

Fresh project with fresh composer.json. Using

composer config allow-plugins.dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer true
composer require --dev phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp:"^2.1"

installs the packages. But then

vendor/bin/phpcs -i

does only show:

The installed coding standards are MySource, PEAR, PSR1, PSR2, PSR12, Squiz and Zend

Resulting composer.json:

{
    "name": "web1/test",
    "minimum-stability": "stable",
    "config": {
        "allow-plugins": {
            "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": true
        }
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp": "^2.1"
    }
}

What does I miss?

[jrfnl]

@threadi I cannot reproduce the issue.

When I follow the exact steps you outline above, the composer.json file I end up with is 100% the same, but the output for vendor/bin/phpcs -i is:

The installed coding standards are MySource, PEAR, PSR1, PSR2, PSR12, Squiz, Zend, PHPCompatibility, PHPCompatibilityParagonieRandomCompat, PHPCompatibilityParagonieSodiumCompat and PHPCompatibilityWP

Are you sure you ran vendor/bin/phpcs -i and not phpcs -i ?

The most likely cause of issues like you describe, is multiple installs of PHPCS on a machine and a ruleset being installed project locally, but then the phpcs -i being run via the system global install.

[threadi]

That's really strange. I've now tested it on three different systems, one of which didn't have Composer installed beforehand.

It definitely executes vendor/bin/phpcs -i

When I run phpcs -i I get Command not found

When I run vendor/bin/phpcs -vvv I also see the correct absolute paths for the sniffer files. However, I don't see anything about phpcompatibility-wp in it.

I have no problems using wp-coding-standards/wpcs - I do that with all my WP plugins. It's only phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp that's failing at the moment.

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": "327a00f3e7a58c1c010f9177f9b70bd2",
    "packages": [],
    "packages-dev": [
        {
            "name": "phpcompatibility/php-compatibility",
            "version": "9.3.5",
            "source": {
                "type": "git",
                "url": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility.git",
                "reference": "9fb324479acf6f39452e0655d2429cc0d3914243"
            },
            "dist": {
                "type": "zip",
                "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility/zipball/9fb324479acf6f39452e0655d2429cc0d3914243",
                "reference": "9fb324479acf6f39452e0655d2429cc0d3914243",
                "shasum": ""
            },
            "require": {
                "php": ">=5.3",
                "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^2.3 || ^3.0.2"
            },
            "conflict": {
                "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "2.6.2"
            },
            "require-dev": {
                "phpunit/phpunit": "~4.5 || ^5.0 || ^6.0 || ^7.0"
            },
            "suggest": {
                "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^0.5 || This Composer plugin will sort out the PHPCS 'installed_paths' automatically.",
                "roave/security-advisories": "dev-master || Helps prevent installing dependencies with known security issues."
            },
            "type": "phpcodesniffer-standard",
            "notification-url": "https://packagist.org/downloads/",
            "license": [
                "LGPL-3.0-or-later"
            ],
            "authors": [
                {
                    "name": "Wim Godden",
                    "homepage": "https://github.com/wimg",
                    "role": "lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Juliette Reinders Folmer",
                    "homepage": "https://github.com/jrfnl",
                    "role": "lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Contributors",
                    "homepage": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility/graphs/contributors"
                }
            ],
            "description": "A set of sniffs for PHP_CodeSniffer that checks for PHP cross-version compatibility.",
            "homepage": "http://techblog.wimgodden.be/tag/codesniffer/",
            "keywords": [
                "compatibility",
                "phpcs",
                "standards"
            ],
            "support": {
                "issues": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility/issues",
                "source": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility"
            },
            "time": "2019-12-27T09:44:58+00:00"
        },
        {
            "name": "phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-paragonie",
            "version": "1.3.4",
            "source": {
                "type": "git",
                "url": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityParagonie.git",
                "reference": "244d7b04fc4bc2117c15f5abe23eb933b5f02bbf"
            },
            "dist": {
                "type": "zip",
                "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityParagonie/zipball/244d7b04fc4bc2117c15f5abe23eb933b5f02bbf",
                "reference": "244d7b04fc4bc2117c15f5abe23eb933b5f02bbf",
                "shasum": ""
            },
            "require": {
                "phpcompatibility/php-compatibility": "^9.0"
            },
            "require-dev": {
                "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^1.0",
                "paragonie/random_compat": "dev-master",
                "paragonie/sodium_compat": "dev-master"
            },
            "suggest": {
                "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^1.0 || This Composer plugin will sort out the PHP_CodeSniffer 'installed_paths' automatically.",
                "roave/security-advisories": "dev-master || Helps prevent installing dependencies with known security issues."
            },
            "type": "phpcodesniffer-standard",
            "notification-url": "https://packagist.org/downloads/",
            "license": [
                "LGPL-3.0-or-later"
            ],
            "authors": [
                {
                    "name": "Wim Godden",
                    "role": "lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Juliette Reinders Folmer",
                    "role": "lead"
                }
            ],
            "description": "A set of rulesets for PHP_CodeSniffer to check for PHP cross-version compatibility issues in projects, while accounting for polyfills provided by the Paragonie polyfill libraries.",
            "homepage": "http://phpcompatibility.com/",
            "keywords": [
                "compatibility",
                "paragonie",
                "phpcs",
                "polyfill",
                "standards",
                "static analysis"
            ],
            "support": {
                "issues": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityParagonie/issues",
                "security": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityParagonie/security/policy",
                "source": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityParagonie"
            },
            "funding": [
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/jrfnl",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://opencollective.com/php_codesniffer",
                    "type": "open_collective"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://thanks.dev/u/gh/phpcompatibility",
                    "type": "thanks_dev"
                }
            ],
            "time": "2025-09-19T17:43:28+00:00"
        },
        {
            "name": "phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp",
            "version": "2.1.8",
            "source": {
                "type": "git",
                "url": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP.git",
                "reference": "7c8d18b4d90dac9e86b0869a608fa09158e168fa"
            },
            "dist": {
                "type": "zip",
                "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP/zipball/7c8d18b4d90dac9e86b0869a608fa09158e168fa",
                "reference": "7c8d18b4d90dac9e86b0869a608fa09158e168fa",
                "shasum": ""
            },
            "require": {
                "phpcompatibility/php-compatibility": "^9.0",
                "phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-paragonie": "^1.0",
                "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^3.3"
            },
            "require-dev": {
                "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^1.0"
            },
            "suggest": {
                "dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer": "^1.0 || This Composer plugin will sort out the PHP_CodeSniffer 'installed_paths' automatically.",
                "roave/security-advisories": "dev-master || Helps prevent installing dependencies with known security issues."
            },
            "type": "phpcodesniffer-standard",
            "notification-url": "https://packagist.org/downloads/",
            "license": [
                "LGPL-3.0-or-later"
            ],
            "authors": [
                {
                    "name": "Wim Godden",
                    "role": "lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Juliette Reinders Folmer",
                    "role": "lead"
                }
            ],
            "description": "A ruleset for PHP_CodeSniffer to check for PHP cross-version compatibility issues in projects, while accounting for polyfills provided by WordPress.",
            "homepage": "http://phpcompatibility.com/",
            "keywords": [
                "compatibility",
                "phpcs",
                "standards",
                "static analysis",
                "wordpress"
            ],
            "support": {
                "issues": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP/issues",
                "security": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP/security/policy",
                "source": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP"
            },
            "funding": [
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/PHPCompatibility",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/jrfnl",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://opencollective.com/php_codesniffer",
                    "type": "open_collective"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://thanks.dev/u/gh/phpcompatibility",
                    "type": "thanks_dev"
                }
            ],
            "time": "2025-10-18T00:05:59+00:00"
        },
        {
            "name": "squizlabs/php_codesniffer",
            "version": "3.13.5",
            "source": {
                "type": "git",
                "url": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer.git",
                "reference": "0ca86845ce43291e8f5692c7356fccf3bcf02bf4"
            },
            "dist": {
                "type": "zip",
                "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer/zipball/0ca86845ce43291e8f5692c7356fccf3bcf02bf4",
                "reference": "0ca86845ce43291e8f5692c7356fccf3bcf02bf4",
                "shasum": ""
            },
            "require": {
                "ext-simplexml": "*",
                "ext-tokenizer": "*",
                "ext-xmlwriter": "*",
                "php": ">=5.4.0"
            },
            "require-dev": {
                "phpunit/phpunit": "^4.0 || ^5.0 || ^6.0 || ^7.0 || ^8.0 || ^9.3.4"
            },
            "bin": [
                "bin/phpcbf",
                "bin/phpcs"
            ],
            "type": "library",
            "notification-url": "https://packagist.org/downloads/",
            "license": [
                "BSD-3-Clause"
            ],
            "authors": [
                {
                    "name": "Greg Sherwood",
                    "role": "Former lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Juliette Reinders Folmer",
                    "role": "Current lead"
                },
                {
                    "name": "Contributors",
                    "homepage": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer/graphs/contributors"
                }
            ],
            "description": "PHP_CodeSniffer tokenizes PHP, JavaScript and CSS files and detects violations of a defined set of coding standards.",
            "homepage": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer",
            "keywords": [
                "phpcs",
                "standards",
                "static analysis"
            ],
            "support": {
                "issues": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer/issues",
                "security": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer/security/policy",
                "source": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer",
                "wiki": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer/wiki"
            },
            "funding": [
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/PHPCSStandards",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://github.com/jrfnl",
                    "type": "github"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://opencollective.com/php_codesniffer",
                    "type": "open_collective"
                },
                {
                    "url": "https://thanks.dev/u/gh/phpcsstandards",
                    "type": "thanks_dev"
                }
            ],
            "time": "2025-11-04T16:30:35+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "aliases": [],
    "minimum-stability": "stable",
    "stability-flags": {},
    "prefer-stable": false,
    "prefer-lowest": false,
    "platform": {},
    "platform-dev": {},
    "plugin-api-version": "2.9.0"
}

[jrfnl]

@threadi Could you please run vendor/bin/phpcs --config-show ?

The output should be similar to this:

Using config file: path/to/project/vendor/squizlabs/php_codesniffer/CodeSniffer.conf

installed_paths: ../../phpcompatibility/php-compatibility,../../phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-paragonie,../../phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp

When I run vendor/bin/phpcs -vvv I also see the correct absolute paths for the sniffer files. However, I don't see anything about phpcompatibility-wp in it.

That's a different issue altogether and to diagnose that, there is too little information available.
What is happening there depends on whether you have a custom ruleset in place which automatically gets picked up by PHPCS and whether that ruleset includes PHPCompatibilityWP.

Let's first solve your original problem, before moving on to the next.

[jrfnl]

Oh.. hang on... I'm only just noticing that you are requiring version 2.*

In that case, the problem is that you didn't install the dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer package which does the registration of the ruleset with PHP_CodeSniffer.

Now, you could fix that by running:

composer require --dev dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer:"^1.2"

... however, I'd recommend you switch to using version 3 of PHPCompatibilityWP instead. Yes, version 3 is in alpha, but it offers a huge amount of extra checks and is pretty stable.
Version 3 will automatically come with the dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer Composer plugin, so you don't need to install that yourself anymore (though you do still need to give it permission to run).

So, I'd recommend running this:

composer config minimum-stability dev
composer config prefer-stable true
composer require --dev phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp:"^3.0@dev"

That should install version 3.0.0-alpha1.

[threadi]

Thank you so much for your support. The last step worked.

In my test environment, I simply had to run:

composer require --dev dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer:"^1.2"

and then I was able to run the test:

vendor/bin/phpcs -p . --standard=PHPCompatibilityWP

Afterwards, I was also able to add it to one of my WordPress plugins where I already use wp-coding-standards/wpcs. However, I also had to manually add the following to the composer.json file:

Before:

"scripts": {
		"post-install-cmd": [
			"\"vendor/bin/phpcs\" --config-set installed_paths vendor/wp-coding-standards/wpcs,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsextra,vendor/sirbrillig/phpcs-variable-analysis,vendor/automattic/vipwpcs"
		],
		"post-update-cmd": [
			"\"vendor/bin/phpcs\" --config-set installed_paths vendor/wp-coding-standards/wpcs,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsextra,vendor/sirbrillig/phpcs-variable-analysis,vendor/automattic/vipwpcs"
		]
	},

After:

"scripts": {
		"post-install-cmd": [
			"\"vendor/bin/phpcs\" --config-set installed_paths vendor/wp-coding-standards/wpcs,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsextra,vendor/sirbrillig/phpcs-variable-analysis,vendor/automattic/vipwpcs,vendor/phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp,vendor/phpcompatibility/php-compatibility,vendor/phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-paragonie"
		],
		"post-update-cmd": [
			"\"vendor/bin/phpcs\" --config-set installed_paths vendor/wp-coding-standards/wpcs,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsutils,vendor/phpcsstandards/phpcsextra,vendor/sirbrillig/phpcs-variable-analysis,vendor/automattic/vipwpcs,vendor/phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-wp,vendor/phpcompatibility/php-compatibility,vendor/phpcompatibility/phpcompatibility-paragonie"
		]
	},

This works with version 2.1 of PHPCompatibilityWP. :)

I don't want to use version 3.0.0@alpha or dev with my plugins yet, as I'm mindful of the stability of the packages I use. Once version 3.0.0 is stable, I'll gladly update. :)

I suspect this will also help others who still want to use version 2.1. Unfortunately, it's not very well described in your readme.

I'm closing this issue as it's resolved for me :)

[jrfnl]

However, I also had to manually add the following to the composer.json file...

That's actually a really bad idea if you also are using the dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer plugin, as those commands will override and nullify what the Composer plugin does.

The biggest advantage of using the plugin is that you don't have to manually maintain the installed_paths and don't need to have an awareness of any underlying PHPCS packages/rulesets which are being used by your dependencies.

I'd strongly advise that if you have the plugin in require-dev, please remove those scripts completely.

I don't want to use version 3.0.0@alpha or dev with my plugins yet, as I'm mindful of the stability of the packages I use. Once version 3.0.0 is stable, I'll gladly update. :)

That's fair enough and you do you.

Just so you know, the 2.* version is based on PHPCompatibility 9.* which had its last release in 2019, so doesn't have any detection for new/deprecated/removed features from PHP 8.0 onwards.

The 3.* version is based on PHPCompatibility 10.* which had a new (alpha) release yesterday including the detection of quite some PHP 8.5 issues.

The reason these are in alpha is because not all sniffs which existed in PHPCompatibility 9.* have been reviewed to deal correctly with new PHP 8.x syntaxes yet, so those may throw false positives/negatives.

Considering you are in the WP ecosystem, chances are you are writing PHP cross-version compatible code with a PHP 7.2 minimum (am I right ?) and in that case, you wouldn't be using any syntaxes yet which yield those false positives/false negatives and by not using v 3.*/v 10.*, you are just denying yourself the benefit of much improved and much more extensive detection of PHPCompatibility issues.

I suspect this will also help others who still want to use version 2.1. Unfortunately, it's not very well described in your readme.

Actually it is, if you look at the README for the last 2.* version: https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibilityWP/blob/2.1.8/README.md

The README displayed for a package's homepage is the one for the "default" branch, which is already 3.*.

[threadi]

Thanks for sticking with it and for the tips. I once added the scripts to composer.json to enable the WordPress Coding Standards check. Thanks to your tip, I've just removed the lines completely and can still run all checks without it. I hadn't realized that it was no longer necessary. If the line is specified, it apparently overwrites what the packages already enable on their own. Another optimization :)

For now, I'm only using PHP compatibility to detect potential problems during the release build. Thanks to this feature, I've already found two typos with missing parentheses in a plugin that I didn't notice in any other checks (not a functional error per se, but it can be annoying for the user in the output). As of today, my plugins are always compatible with 8.1 and newer (8.5 is also already running great). I no longer want to support older PHP-versions.

Thanks again :)

[jrfnl]

Glad the advise helped.

I hadn't realized that it was no longer necessary. If the line is specified, it apparently overwrites what the packages already enable on their own. Another optimization :)

Not what the packages enable - it overwrites what that Composer plugin (dealerdirect/phpcodesniffer-composer-installer) does.

Both WPCS as well as PHPCompatibility now require the use of the plugin, so you no longer need to require-dev it yourself, nor manually maintain the installed_paths.

This change is described in the upgrade guide for both WordPressCS 3.0 as well as PHPCompatibility 10.0:

• https://github.com/PHPCompatibility/PHPCompatibility/wiki/Upgrading-to-PHPCompatibility-10.0
• https://github.com/wordPress/wordPress-Coding-Standards/wiki/Upgrade-Guide-to-WordPressCS-3.0.0-for-ruleset-maintainers

I no longer want to support older PHP-versions.

Hear hear, so I hope that means you'll try the 3.0 version as that will help you more than the 2.* version.