Composer (PHP)

Some extensions of MediWiki are managed by composer, a snmall PHP script. This tool is intended to manage dependencies and needed versions of software components, such as MediaWiki extensions. It needs a basic configuration file (composer.json in the wiki root folder) and installation or removal of extensions is done on the command line.

Documentation:

• Composer (MediaWiki)
• Extensions supporting Composer (MediaWiki)
• https://packagist.org/search/ search any composer managed extension
• Composer itself: https://getcomposer.org/doc/ the very composer documentation

Step 0: First install of PHP composer tool itself to a local shared bin-directory:

cd ~ # go to personal home directory
sudo curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo chown root:mwadmin composer.phar
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/

Step 1: Manage your required extensions in file composer.json in the root wiki folder. A basic setup is shipped usually by the Mediawiki installation. File composer.json can look like:

{
  "require": {
    "php": ">=5.3.2"
  },
  "suggest": {
    "ext-fileinfo": "More accurate file type detection for uploaded files",
    "ext-mbstring": "Faster unicode handling",
    "ext-wikidiff2": "Faster diff generation",
    "ext-apc": "Speed up MediaWiki with opcode caching (before PHP 5.5)"
  },
  "autoload": {
    "psr-0": {
      "ComposerHookHandler": "includes/composer"
    }
  },
  "scripts": {
    "pre-update-cmd": "ComposerHookHandler::onPreUpdate",
    "pre-install-cmd": "ComposerHookHandler::onPreInstall"
  },
  "config": {
    "optimize-autoloader": true
  }
}

Add an extension

Read the documentation of the extension what kind of version you need and so forth, the extension’s documentation should describe it sufficiently.

The following “require”-command will update your composer.json as well as install the extension including potential dependencies:

cd /var/www/path/to-wiki-root/
sudo -u www-data php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar require 'mediawiki/semantic-maps' '3.1.3'

Update extensions

cd /var/www/path/to-wiki-root/
sudo -u www-data php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar update

Remove an extension

See https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#remove

cd /var/www/path/to-wiki-root/
sudo -u www-data php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar remove 'mediawiki/semantic-maps'

Self Update of composer

sudo php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar self-update