Level 23
Honestly composer removes the necessity to be moving the vendor code of your application. Moving over that vendor folder which is very big, can sometimes take a ver long time.
1 like
Aug 9, 2018
6
Level 6
Does Laravel require itself and Composer to be "installed" on a VPS Host?
My Host (inmotionhosting) has "documentation" on installing Laravel via Composer to the VPS. My question is: why would I do that? Can't I just move my files/folders as I've been doing for years? I'm evaluating Laravel 5.4 and will need to know things like this as I stumble across them. This host is okay, but whenever any kind of configuration is changed (basically anything other than my code), things get screwed up and I have to spend a lot of time with their support staff -- which is sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Over 85% of the time, it's something that was their fault. (Please don't suggest moving to a new host -- I've already investigated that and it's more trouble than it's worth, plus I can always find negative reviews on any host so one is about as good as another). I currently develop locally and upload to a test version of my site. When the test looks good, I move it to production. I don't want to, nor do I see the need to, "install Composer and Laravel" on a remote VPS with this host. So , can't I just move my files/folders as I've been doing? I'd prefer to keep it simple with the process I already have.
Level 12
yes you can just copy (throw a ftp for example) all of your files from your local machine. but it will take some minutes to be done. laravel has tons of files in it vendor folder. using composer in your vps to download your dependency is like a good practice, but you can skip it
1 like
Level 67
It's a lot faster for the host to directly download the vendor packages, than you uploading them.
Level 6
Appreciate all the answers, and I do understand the "speed" of Composer updating the vendor files. However, I have been in this "rodeo" before on a Ruby team and I saw a lotta havoc wreaked when they just let their "gems" get updated automatically. It was at least a weekly occurrence for that team that some "gem" either had, or caused, errors. So I'm not big on something getting updated before I've tested it in my own world. Know whatta mean?The other thing is that my host doesn't offer much support for Composer installation issues and I see a ton of them in their forum. Anyway, thanks to all for confirming that I can simply upload my files. I certainly won't be uploading the whole Laravel suite very often.
Level 67
when they just let their "gems" get updated automatically
You can easily lock packages to specific versions in composer.json, and submit your composer.lock file. This really isn't an issue if you don't let it.
Like instead of "laravel/laravel 5.5.*", lock it to 5.5.2. Then it won't ever get upgraded past 5.5.2 unless you manually bump the version in composer.json.
It sounds like these previous teams you were on just didn't know how to use composer effectively.
1 like
Level 6
No sir, they didn't -- at least not for a while. Their "package manager" was not Composer, it was whatever Ruby uses, but I believe they eventually figured out that they needed to "lock" their production code.
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