History: Composer

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            ! Composer
Composer is a Software Dependency Manager for PHP, which is heavily used by Tiki.

* Official website: https://getcomposer.org/
* Package repositories: 
** Main: https://packagist.org/
** Secondary: https://asset-packagist.org (after ((dev:Composer Dependencies not on Packagist|considering other options))) 
* Tiki uses Composer to manage [https://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/vendor_bundled/composer.json|125+ library dependencies in PHP and JavaScript], which are bundled as part of the regular Tiki install.
* Superfluous code is removed via [https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki/-/blob/22.x/lib/core/Tiki/Composer/CleanVendors.php|CleanVendors]
* ((Tiki18)) has a web-based tool to install ((Packages)), which permits to manage even more libraries.
* [https://packagist.org/packages/cweagans/composer-patches|cweagans/composer-patches] is used to patch dependencies. This is usually used until a patch is incorporated in a released version of a library
** the patches should be versioned as binary files, to avoid problems with line breaks
* The Tiki community runs its own instance of [https://github.com/composer/satis|Satis], a Simple static Composer repository generator. Source: [https://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/doc/devtools/satis.json|satis.json], web: http://composer.tiki.org
* Picking and maintaining dependencies is a critical skill because https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1z09jq/why_your_software_project_will_slowly_die_without/
* Developers coordinate here: https://dev.tiki.org/Composer

!! History
* Tiki started in 2002, and there was no such tool to manage dependencies
* The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composer_(software)|first release of Composer was in 2012]. 
* In 2013, [https://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/44846|Tiki started using Composer and progressively porting dependencies] (instead using SVN externals)
* From 2014 to 2017: dependencies are progressively migrated to Composer
* In 2017, ((dev:Composer Dependencies Revamp|Composer usage in Tiki was revamped))  and a web-based Composer tool was added  ->  ((Packages))
* In 2018, we [https://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/65977|added support for asset-packagist.org] for when dependencies are not on Packagist.org but only NPM or Bower.
* In 2018, a simple way to install packages via FTP: https://packages.tiki.org/
* In 2021, we moved to [https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki/-/merge_requests/785/diffs|Composer v2], in time for ((Tiki23)) so it will be nice and robust for ((Tiki24))LTS

!! Stats
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