Quick Tip: Testing Feature Branches with Composer

I was adding a new feature to my CakePHP SecureIDs Plugin today and needed to test it against a living, breathing CakePHP app. Rather than spin up a brand-new one, I decided to use an existing app I had on hand for a contract I have open. Thing was, I didn’t want to go through the whole rigamarole of creating a release, pushing it, waiting for it to hit Packagist, waiting for Composer to see it, and only then being able to add it as a dependency to my app.

Composer is a smart tool, and so is git-flow. Surely I can combine the two to bypass the above lengthy process and get testing faster, I thought. Turns out it’s totally possible, here’s how I did it in a few easy steps (I’ll go into greater detail in a minute):

1. Start a feature branch in the plugin repo
2. Push the feature branch to the remote
3. In the test app’s composer.json add the repository the plugin sits in
4. Add the dependency with the version string dev-feature/feature-name

For what it’s worth, I didn’t think this was gonna work because I was sure Composer was gonna choke on the / in the branch name…but nope! Handled it just fine. 👌

Breakdown

So what does all this mean? In short, the steps above describe a way to short-circuit the package release process used in testing dependencies with Composer. Normally it’s a lengthy process with lots of steps in between committing your code and actually seeing it work in a living-breathing app, but the process I described above is a better way if you’re just testing things or making temporary changes. Don’t use this process to release code into the wild, it’s not a good idea.

In order to use the steps above, your repo must be git-flow enabled. Git flow is a very powerful tool that I’ve used for years to keep my development process sane and well-organized, especially when working in teams. I don’t have time to evangelize GF properly here, so I’ll leave that up to some other qualified individuals:

• What is Git Flow? on datasift’s Github page
• Gitflow Workflow on the excellent Atlassian Git tutorials site
• GitFlow and when you should use it on Tomas Bjerre’s blog