How to run composer from anywhere

Question

I have just installed composer in my /usr/bin folder, so when from that folder I run php composer.phar I get the help info about composer. But, when I try to run the same from other folder I get Could not open input file: composer.phar.

How to call php composer.phar from every where without problems?

Answer 1

Since Composer works with the current working directory it is possible to install it in a system wide way.

• Change into a directory in your path like cd /usr/local/bin
• Get Composer curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
• Make the phar executable chmod a+x composer.phar
• Change into a project directory cd /path/to/my/project
• Use Composer as you normally would composer.phar install
• Optionally you can rename the composer.phar to composer to make it easier

Sometimes you can't or don't want to download at /usr/local/bin (some have experienced user permissions issues or restricted access), in this case you can try this

• Open terminal
• curl -sS http://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --filename=composer
• chmod a+x composer
• sudo mv composer /usr/local/bin/composer