use a global Composer installation

[xabbuh]

Q	A
Doc fix?	yes
New docs?	no
Applies to	all
Fixed tickets	#4170

This pull request replaces all mentions of local Composer installations, but uses a gobal Composer installation instead.

Note: This should be considered on hold and not be merged until we have an agreement on this in #4170.

[xabbuh]

Previously, we had more detailed installation instructions in /book/installation.rst and /contributing/code/tests.rst. Both now only link to the Composer documentation. Is that sufficient enough?

I kept the installations notes in the quick tour which already described the global installation method.

I also didn't modify the Azure deployment chapter as I was not sure on whether or not it is possible to perform a working global installation there.

[weaverryan]

Bah, I wish we had better links than this :(. Since Windows and Linux is split up, this is the best linking we can do, which kind of sucks.

What do you think about a really tiny cookbook article on how to install Composer? It would basically only need to have what you see here: http://symfony.com/download (after clicking the What is Composer and how to install it link).

Thoughts?

[stof]

Actually, it is not. But http://getcomposer.org/download/ displays the Windows instructions only for Windows users: https://github.com/composer/getcomposer.org/blob/master/views/download.html.twig#L25

[stof]

hmm, sorry, the download page does shows the local installation for Unix systems, not the global one

[weaverryan]

1. Yes to linking more to Composer (or maybe that new cookbook entry I just proposed) and less explaining things about Composer inline.

2. Yes, to leaving Azure, at least for now - it definitely doesn't hurt anything in that isolated case anyways.

Thanks!

[xabbuh]

I created a litte cookbook entry about Composer and changed all external Composer references to point to this new article.

[weaverryan]

👍

[wouterj]

👎 on the cookbook article. It's out of the scope for the Symfony docs. We should fix the composer website instead.

[wouterj]

or just link to the symfony download page, which has very nice explainations

[weaverryan]

We can't link to the download page, because the message is hidden. And yea, if we can update the Composer documentation to clearly show the ways to do a global install, let's link to them. So I would say:

1. Merge this now - it's a great user-experience to have these very specific instructions without any other distractions.

2. Update the Composer download page to be equally as clear and then link to them in the future instead.

What do you say? This doc is quite short, so I don't feel that we're re-implementing a lot of docs.

Thanks!

[xabbuh]

I agree with you, Ryan.

[Nek-]

👎 for the cookbook. This is indeed the job of composer.

👍 for the recommandation & usage of global composer install, this will be recommanded also on the composer documentation. More than that, there is already a part of the composer documentation that explain global installation: https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally

[weaverryan]

Hey guys!

Remember, the cookbook article is only a few lines long - we're not doing much: https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/4173/files#diff-84716be8ffd14db1f5582ac7dd3e876eR1.

You're right that there is a section in the Composer docs (https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally) that does a pretty good job. But it's not as clear as our new, very short section. This is because we only give you the instructions, not any other details or options (but we can link to the Composer docs for more information).

So I'm still a +1 for the cookbook entry, but I'm certainly open to getting a consensus on this.

Thanks!

[xabbuh]

Do we actually have to talk about a global Composer installation at all when @javiereguiluz has updated all installation instructions for the new Symfony Installer (see #4122)?

[javiereguiluz]

@xabbuh Composer is still relevant for updating Symfony, installing bundles and adding new dependencies. I'm all in for the Composer cookbook.

[xabbuh]

@javiereguiluz Of course, I totally forgot about that.

By the way, someone proposed a couple of days ago to make some parts of the installation instructions on symfony.com available on the symfony/symfony-marketing repository. This could, for example, cover the basic usage of the Symfony Installer as well as the global installation of Composer. Did you think any further about that? Does it seem to be a reasonable option to you?

[javiereguiluz]

@xabbuh it's indeed very relevant to us. One of my short-term goals is to make all symfony.com pages' contents translatable (I'm referring to static pages, not the documentation). So symfony/marketing is definitely going to be very important in all this.

[wouterj]

@xabbuh can you please rebase this (I think this mostly means removing the changes in book/installation as it uses the installer now)?

I'm still not very +1 for the cookbook, but we can always remove it when Composer has been improved by the great @weaverryan :)

[xabbuh]

It's rebased now.

[weaverryan]

Nice work guys! I like the tiny entry (and yes, if we can remove it later, that's also a step forward) and the consistency. Now we can "keep our ears open" to see if this new change confuses anyone around the web. Thanks!