Laravel "new project" installs a bunch of apps - php

Question

I am completely new to Laravel.
I use Vagrant and virtual machine so I installed composer aand laravel installer there.
When I create new project each time I see that it also installs a bunch of other apps. It says
Crafting application... Loading composer repositories with package
information Installing dependencies (including require-dev) from lock
file Package operations: 70 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
then goes a list of apps it installs
- Installing doctrine/inflector (v1.3.0): Loading from cache
- Installing doctrine/lexer (v1.0.1): Loading from cache
- Installing dragonmantank/cron-expression (v2.0.0): Loading from cache
- Installing erusev/parsedown (1.7.1): Loading from cache
- Installing vlucas/phpdotenv (v2.4.0): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/css-selector (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing tijsverkoyen/css-to-inline-styles (2.2.1): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/polyfill-php72 (v1.7.0): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/polyfill-mbstring (v1.7.0): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/var-dumper (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/routing (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/process (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/http-foundation (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/event-dispatcher (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing psr/log (1.0.2): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/debug (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/http-kernel (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/finder (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/console (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing egulias/email-validator (2.1.3): Loading from cache
- Installing swiftmailer/swiftmailer (v6.0.2): Loading from cache
- Installing paragonie/random_compat (v2.0.11): Loading from cache
- Installing ramsey/uuid (3.7.3): Loading from cache
- Installing psr/simple-cache (1.0.1): Loading from cache
- Installing psr/container (1.0.0): Loading from cache
- Installing symfony/translation (v4.0.6): Loading from cache
- Installing nesbot/carbon (1.25.0): Loading from cache
- Installing monolog/monolog (1.23.0): Loading from cache
- Installing league/flysystem (1.0.43): Loading from cache
- Installing laravel/framework (v5.6.14): Downloading (100%)
- Installing fideloper/proxy (4.0.0): Loading from cache
- Installing jakub-onderka/php-console-color (0.1): Loading from cache
- Installing nikic/php-parser (v3.1.5): Loading from cache
and etc.
Is it okay, or am I doing something wrong?
I use command
laravel new exampleProject

Answer 1

You aren't doing anything wrong, that's the expected behaviour when you install a Laravel project dependencies.
The thing is composer not only installs the dependencies listed in that project composer.json but also the dependencies of the dependencies and so on recursively.
For example, the Laravel application composer file requires the following dependencies:
"require": {
"php": "^7.1.3",
"fideloper/proxy": "^4.0",
"laravel/framework": "5.6.*",
"laravel/tinker": "^1.0"
}
but composer has to make sure you also have every dependency needed to run these, so it looks in their respective composer.json files, like in the laravel/framework one, which contains this:
"require": {
"php": "^7.1.3",
"ext-mbstring": "*",
"ext-openssl": "*",
"doctrine/inflector": "~1.1",
"dragonmantank/cron-expression": "~2.0",
"erusev/parsedown": "~1.7",
"league/flysystem": "^1.0.8",
"monolog/monolog": "~1.12",
"nesbot/carbon": "^1.24.1",
"psr/container": "~1.0",
"psr/simple-cache": "^1.0",
"ramsey/uuid": "^3.7",
"swiftmailer/swiftmailer": "~6.0",
"symfony/console": "~4.0",
"symfony/debug": "~4.0",
"symfony/finder": "~4.0",
"symfony/http-foundation": "~4.0",
"symfony/http-kernel": "~4.0",
"symfony/process": "~4.0",
"symfony/routing": "~4.0",
"symfony/var-dumper": "~4.0",
"tijsverkoyen/css-to-inline-styles": "^2.2.1",
"vlucas/phpdotenv": "~2.2"
}
it installs them and so on and so forth until it has fulfilled every dependency.
As you can imagine this can add up fast, and once installed every single dependency in your project is listed in your composer.lock file if you want to check them out.
That's why you are getting more dependencies installed than you were expecting.