What are the pros/cons of composer?

Question

PHP

Recently, this tool has been actively getting into trends, but the profitability of its use still does not reach me. For large projects with auto-deploy, scaling, etc., it is perfect. The node was launched, we unloaded the code, we started the composer, everything worked, but what is the fundamental difference from build servers, etc., which somehow deploy the code to production. I would be very grateful for real cases of using this.

Answer 1

The easiest way is to compare Composer with Bundler.
Composer is not a deployment or migration tool like Capistrano\Capifony, its main task is to manage dependencies. When holes are found in libs or bugs are corrected and you need to quickly update dependencies, there is no better tool.

Answer 2

Real case: only the application folder with your classes (controllers, models, etc.) is stored in the git repository. All other libraries (including the framework itself) are received by other developers and the server themselves - via composer update (install). This approach, firstly, speeds up class autoloading, and secondly, it allows you to add a new library in one line and immediately start using it.

Answer 3

The thing is, there are no alternatives. And PECL/PHAR can hardly be called extensions at all (although they extend the core, not your code).

Answer 4

It is not a deployment tool. It would be more reasonable to compare it with apt. And just in a big project, IMHO, its usefulness is questionable. Because in a large project auto-deploy.