Workflow for developing Laravel Packages - php

Question

I'm developing my first Laravel Package, and I realize that my workflow contains much more steps for publishing each modification.
Here is my workflow:
I create a Fresh Laravel 5.4 install. Inside, I create a package/author/name/src where I code my plugin.
I run my tests
Once I have made my change and want to publish it:
a.I push it to my Git rep
b.I tag it with version number
c.In my main project, I run composer update
I check that nothing broke with the integration
This is quite a lot of changes for each little change I want to see in my main project....
Is there a way not to publish any single change, just doing local?

Answer 1

Yes, you can locally develop a package and use it without publishing it. The workflow is: create a packages directory outside of your Laravel project then create the package directory in it, for example the directory structure should look something like this:
- my-laravel-project
- packages
- - my-package-1
- - - composer.json
- - my-package-2
- - - composer.json
Then, in your Laravel project's composer.json file, add the repositories section like given below and add an entry into the require section for each local package, for example:
{
"repositories": [
{
"type": "path",
"url": "../packages/my-package-1"
},
{
"type": "path",
"url": "../packages/my-package-2"
}
],
"require": {
"my/package-1": "*",
"my/package-2": "*"
}
}
In this example, I've two different packages inside packages directory and I've added both packages in the Laravel project. The repositories section describes the package type and path/url for each package so composer can find them locally and require section is simply requiring the dependencies as usual. You may check more on Composer's website.