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composer-subtree-plugin

A Composer plugin that adds practical Git subtree commands to your PHP project.

Implemented today:

composer subtree:add
composer subtree:pull
composer subtree:push

What this project is

composer-subtree-plugin helps you manage subtree-based package workflows from Composer commands. It stores subtree metadata on type=path repository entries in composer.json.repositories[].composer-subtree-plugin and uses those definitions for pull/push operations.

Why use this

This plugin is useful when your team has internal libraries that were previously pulled in through Composer vcs repositories, and that setup is causing friction in CI and deployment.

Common pain points with vcs internal dependencies:

CI and deploy jobs depend on external repository availability and auth at install time.
Build environments need extra SSH/token setup just to resolve private package sources.
Reproducibility can become harder when dependency resolution and Git access are tightly coupled.

How this plugin helps:

You vendor internal libraries as Git subtrees directly in your main repository.
Composer installs from local code paths already present in the checkout.
CI and deploy pipelines become simpler because subtree sync is an explicit step (subtree:pull / subtree:push) instead of an implicit runtime dependency fetch.

Requirements

PHP ^8.2
Composer plugin API ^2.2
git with git subtree available

Installation

Install in the consumer project:

composer require yisraeldov/composer-subtree-plugin --dev

If your Composer setup requires explicit plugin approval, add:

{
  "config": {
    "allow-plugins": {
      "yisraeldov/composer-subtree-plugin": true
    }
  }
}

Configuration format

Subtrees are configured on type=path repository entries:

{
  "repositories": [
    {
      "type": "path",
      "url": "packages/pcre",
      "composer-subtree-plugin": {
        "remote": "https://github.com/composer/pcre.git",
        "branch": "main",
        "squash": false
      }
    }
  ]
}

Fields:

url (string): local subtree directory (path repository URL)
remote (string): upstream repository URL
branch (string): upstream branch
squash (bool, optional): whether pull/add uses --squash (defaults to false)

Day-to-day usage

1) Add a new subtree

composer subtree:add <upstream-url> <upstream-branch> [prefix] [--squash]

Example:

composer subtree:add https://github.com/composer/pcre.git main

What it does:

Runs git subtree add --prefix=... <remote> <branch> [--squash]
Ensures composer.json.repositories contains a path repository entry for the subtree prefix
Writes/updates subtree metadata at repositories[].composer-subtree-plugin

Notes:

If prefix is omitted, default is packages/<repo-name>.
Target selection is path-based (for example packages/pcre) or all.
If the git command fails, config is not persisted.

2) Pull subtree updates

composer subtree:pull [target]

target can be a subtree path target (for example packages/pcre) or all.
If omitted, it behaves like all.

Examples:

composer subtree:pull packages/pcre
composer subtree:pull all
composer subtree:pull

What it does per subtree:

git fetch <remote> <branch>
git subtree pull --prefix=<prefix> <remote> <branch> [--squash]

3) Push subtree updates

composer subtree:push [target]

target can be a subtree path target or all.
If omitted, it behaves like all.

Examples:

composer subtree:push packages/pcre
composer subtree:push all
composer subtree:push

What it does per subtree:

git subtree push --prefix=<prefix> <remote> <branch>

Current scope (implemented)

This plugin currently provides:

Add subtree + persist subtree config
Pull one/all configured subtrees
Push one/all configured subtrees

No other subtree commands or update hooks are documented here because they are not implemented yet.

yisraeldov / composer-subtree-plugin

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