Ignore tests folder when send to packagist

Question

I have a project with the following structure:

- src
----/ /* Relevant files */
- tests
----/ /* Irrelevant files */
- composer.json
- phpunit.xml

The project is sent to packagist on every commit already. But, it is sending the test files.

I'd like to ignore tests folder, so composer wont download unecessary files when someone calls composer require my/package

Here is whats the content of my composer.json looks like:

{
    "name": "my/package",
    "description": "...",
    "type": "library",
    "license": "MIT",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=7"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "phpunit/phpunit": ">=5.4"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "MyProject\\": "./src"
        }
    }
}

What if that someone wants to make sure your code is not broken? — Marco Aurélio Deleu, Jul 01 '16 at 18:51
@MarcoAurélioDeleu Then maybe, he could download the "dev version with tests"? — CarlosCarucce, Jul 01 '16 at 18:53
@MarcoAurélioDeleu I don't if it makes sense or not... Its the first time I am implementing unit tests on an open-source project — CarlosCarucce, Jul 01 '16 at 18:56

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:33

Ignore tests folder when send to packagist

Let's first clear up some confusion.

When you enable Packagist for your repository, Packagist will load the composer.json to get metadata about your project and fetch the version informations from the tags/branches.

But you are not sending your PHP code or any tests to Packagist.

I'd like to ignore tests folder, so composer wont download unecessary files when someone calls composer require my/package

This question pops up quite often. I'm referencing a detailed answer, which i've written some time ago, which explains a lot of the background: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32476500/1163786

Usage of a .gitattributes file with export-ignore directive

Technically, you could add a .gitattributes file to your repository, which declares a export-ignore rule for the test folder.
This means that any git export will no longer have the tests folder, including the Github zip file.

Ok, exclude done..

But, when someone composer require's your project, it will now depend on the --prefer-dist setting to install the package from the dist (zip). (You would get the tests with --prefer-source).

If it is a small library, stop to worry. Be happy.. :)
If it is a bigger application, then a better solution is to package your application properly, instead of relying on the git exported zip distribution. Most developers don't use a build.xml or any build script anymore, but that's the correct way to do it in my opinion.

That means once you are ready to tag a new release. You trigger your build script, which fetches all the dependencies, runs the tests once more and when everything is ok, drop all the tests and packages the files for deployment.

Small hint: don't forget to add a autoload-dev section for your tests to composer.json.

Lucas Bustamante · Answer 2 · 2022-11-06T09:29:10.257

If your Packagist package is linked to a GitHub repo, just create a "Release" in GitHub that does not contain the development files.

This works out-of-the-box for your end users, because Composer install/update uses --prefer-dist by default, which serves the package zip that is in the "Release".

The easiest way to do this (And it's how some Symfony packages does it, for instance), is to create a .gitattributes (as Jens suggested) with the following content:

/tests export-ignore

Now, when you create a tag/release in GitHub, the release zip won't contain the tests folder.

The only scenario where tests folder would be included in this case is if the user installed your package with --prefer-source, but if they do that, they should know what they're doing.

Ignore tests folder when send to packagist

2 Answers2