Isolated vendor for your bin dependencies.

As you project grows, it is possible that your bin dependencies collide with each other or with your project dependencies. This would either force you to use a lower version of a given package, or even worse, make your dependencies unsolvable.

It allows you to install your bin vendors in isolated locations, and still link them to your bin-dir.

This is done by registering a bin command, which can be used to run Composer commands inside a namespace.

composer global require bamarni/composer-bin-plugin:0.*

composer bin [namespace] [composer_command]
composer global bin [namespace] [composer_command]

Let's install Behat and PHPSpec inside a bdd namespace :

composer bin bdd require behat/behat:^3.0 phpspec/phpspec:^2.0

This command creates the following directory structure :

├── composer.json
├── composer.lock
├── vendor
│   └── bin
│       ├── behat -> ../../vendor-bin/bdd/vendor/behat/behat/bin/behat
│       └── phpspec -> ../../vendor-bin/bdd/vendor/phpspec/phpspec/bin/phpspec
└── vendor-bin
    └── bdd
        ├── composer.json
        ├── composer.lock
        └── vendor

You can continue to run ./vendor/bin/behat and ./vendor/bin/phpspec, but they'll use an isolated set of dependencies.

The "all" namespace has a special meaning. It runs a command for all existing namespaces.

For instance, the following command would update all your bins :

> composer bin all update
Changed current directory to vendor-bin/phpspec
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files
Changed current directory to vendor-bin/phpunit
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Nothing to install or update
Generating autoload files

Make sure to add the following line in your .gitignore :

vendor-bin/*/vendor

For convenience, you can add the following script in your composer.json :

    {
        "scripts": {
            "post-install-cmd": ["@composer bin all install"]
        }
    }

This makes sure all your bins are installed during composer install.