Configuration

The plugin ships with reasonable defaults that should work on most environments, but many behaviors are configurable.

Configuration provided by Composer Patches

patches-file

1{
2    [...],
3    "extra": {
4        "composer-patches": {
5            "patches-file": "mypatches.json"
6        }
7    }
8}

Default value: patches.json

Patch definitions can additionally be loaded from a JSON file. This value should usually be the name of a file located alongside your composer.json.

Technically, this value can be a path to a file that is nested in a deeper directory in your project. I don’t recommend doing that, as it may cause some confusion if you’re using local patches (all paths to local patches will still be relative to the project root where composer.json is located).

package-depths

 1{
 2    [...],
 3    "extra": {
 4        "composer-patches": {
 5            "package-depths": {
 6                "my/package": 3
 7            }
 8        }
 9    }
10}

Default value: empty

package-depths allows you to specify overrides for the default patch depth used for a given package. The value for each package is the value that would normally be passed to e.g. a patch command: patch -p3 [...].

ignore-dependency-patches

 1{
 2    [...],
 3    "extra": {
 4        "composer-patches": {
 5            "ignore-dependency-patches": [
 6                "some/package",
 7            ]
 8        }
 9    }
10}

Default value: empty

ignore-dependency-patches allows you to ignore patches defined by the listed dependencies. For instance, if your project requires drupal/core and some/package, and some/package defines a patch for drupal/core, listing some/package in ignore-dependency-patches would cause that patch to be ignored. This does not affect the target of those patches. For instance, listing drupal/core here would not cause patches to drupal/core to be ignored.

default-patch-depth

1{
2    [...],
3    "extra": {
4        "composer-patches": {
5            "default-patch-depth": 3
6        }
7    }
8}

Default value: 1

default-patch-depth changes the default patch depth for every package. The default value is usually the right choice (especially if the majority of your patches were created with git).

disable-resolvers

 1{
 2    [...],
 3    "extra": {
 4        "composer-patches": {
 5            "disable-resolvers": [
 6                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Resolver\\RootComposer",
 7                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Resolver\\PatchesFile",
 8                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Resolver\\Dependencies"
 9            ]
10        }
11    }
12}

Default value: empty

disable-resolvers allows you to disable individual patch resolvers (for instance, if you want to disallow specifying patches in your root composer.json, you might want to add the \\cweagans\\Composer\\Resolver\\RootComposer resolver to this list). If a resolver is available and not specified here, it will be used for resolving patches.

For completeness, both of the resolvers that ship with the plugin are listed above, but you should not list both of them unless you don’t want any patches to be discovered.

After changing this value, you should re-lock and re-apply patches to your project.

disable-downloaders

 1{
 2    [...],
 3    "extra": {
 4        "composer-patches": {
 5            "disable-downloaders": [
 6                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Downloader\\ComposerDownloader"
 7            ]
 8        }
 9    }
10}

Default value: empty

disable-downloaders allows you to disable individual patch downloaders. If a downloader is available and not specified here, it may be used for downloading patches.

disable-patchers

 1{
 2    [...],
 3    "extra": {
 4        "composer-patches": {
 5            "disable-patchers": [
 6                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Patcher\\FreeformPatcher",
 7                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Patcher\\GitPatcher",
 8                "\\cweagans\\Composer\\Patcher\\GitInitPatcher"
 9            ]
10        }
11    }
12}

Default value: empty

disable-patchers allows you to disable individual patchers. If a patcher is available and not specified here, it may be used to apply a patch to your project.

For completeness, all of the patchers that ship with the plugin are listed above, but you should not list all of them. If no patchers are available, the plugin will throw an exception during composer install.

GitPatcher and GitInitPatcher should be enabled and disabled together – don’t disable one without the other.

After changing this value, you should re-lock and re-apply patches to your project.

Relevant configuration provided by Composer

secure-http

1{
2    [...],
3    "config": {
4        "secure-http": false
5    }
6}

Default value: true

The relevant Composer documentation for this parameter can be found here.

By default, Composer will block you from downloading anything from plain HTTP URLs. Setting this option will allow you to download data over plain HTTP. Generally, securing the endpoint where you are downloading patches from is a much better option. You can also download patches, save them locally, and distribute them with your project as an alternative. Nevertheless, if you really must download patches over plain HTTP, this is the way to do it.

HTTP_PROXY

1HTTP_PROXY=http://myproxy:1234 composer install

The relevant Composer documentation for this parameter can be found here.

If you are using Composer behind an HTTP proxy (common in corporate network environments), setting this value will cause Composer to properly use the specified proxy. If you’re using the default ComposerDownloader for downloading patches, this setting will be respected and patches will be downloaded through the proxy as well.

COMPOSER

1COMPOSER=composer-123.json composer install

The relevant Composer documentation for this parameter can be found here.

Some projects require the use of multiple composer.json files (along with their respective composer.lock and patches.lock.json). Composer Patches will create a different patches.lock.json file in the event that this environment variable is set. In the example above, composer-123-patches.lock.json would be the lock file that is used for patches.