How do I get Composer to download the latest commit in the master branch from GitHub for a package?

Question

I am trying to get Composer do download the latest commit for the Behat/MinkSelenium2Driver package. That particular repo only has a master branch. I have tried every method I can think of, including deleting the files and letting it pull them back in, to get it to work but it doesn't.

How would I get it to pull in latest committed files or at least those from the commit I list below?

Specifically I want to get this commit: https://github.com/Behat/MinkSelenium2Driver/commit/2e73d8134ec8526b6e742f05c146fec2d5e1b8d6

Thanks, Patrick

Solution 1

There is only one way to grab the head of the repository:

"require": { "behat/mink-selenium2-driver" : "dev-master" }
"minimum-stability": "dev"

Oh well, at least two ways:

"require": { "behat/mink-selenium2-driver" : "dev-master as 1.1.x-dev" }
"minimum-stability": "dev"

Probably at least three ways:

"require": { "behat/mink-selenium2-driver" : "dev-master#2e73d8134ec8526b6e742f05c146fec2d5e1b8d6" }
"minimum-stability": "dev"

Because that repository actually aliased the master branch as 1.1.x-dev, this would also work without the minimum-stability affecting all other packages:

"require": { "behat/mink-selenium2-driver" : "1.1.*@dev" }

Solution 2

Simply specify the master branch:

composer require --dev behat/mink-selenium2-driver:dev-master

PS: the --dev is just to specify it's a test/development requirement, that's probably what you want.

Comments

[Patrick]

Option 4 doesn't work. I have tried it that way and several others (1.*@dev or 1.1.*@dev or 1.*@master). I have not tried using a "dev-master" option of any sort. My current minimum stability is "dev" and has been for a long time. I also tried a "@dev#2e73d8134ec8526b6e742f05c146fec2d5e1b8d6" but it didn't like parsing that. However I did not try it the way you mentioned above with dev-master (and not using the @ sign). I will try your options out and see what works.

[Patrick]

Ok, and the winner is Option #1. That pulled it correctly this time. Thank you kind sir!

[Sven]

Well, it works for me now. It hasn't before, because my PHP-CLI lacked the curl extension, which was needed for one of the dependencies in the higher version that was needed to install your desired commit. After I satisfied this, it worked. Even with option 4.

[Sven]

Note that you might need to delete either the vendor/ directory, or the ~/.composer/ cache directory to be sure any previously installed artefacts do not inhibit installation, i.e. switching from ZIP download to Git clones. You should also run install or update with -vv option to get more output on the decisisions made. It might be entirely possible that another package does not allow to run with the latest 1.1.x version, but with 1.0.x. This would prevent installation of that version.

[Patrick]

My PHP install has had the curl extension installed for awhile. So that wasn't the problem. Option 4 just got me the latest tagged version.

[enchance]

Be careful when using "minimum-stability": "dev". It's not recommended to do so so make sure there's always a good reason why.