Best strategy to update symfony project skeleton - php

Question

I have a customized symfony-project and a custom vendor. In the composer.json of the project the type is set to "project". To update my vendor I use composer update. So far, so good.
But how do I update my project itself? It's installed by composer's create-project, but I know that such as update-project does not exist for composer. What is the best strategy to keep my "skeleton" up-to-date? Using git would require to init git repository and checkout the right branch/tag. So that's not my favourite solution for end-users and release-management. What other methodologies can be used to tackle this scenario?

Answer 1

There is no better alternative, as the skeleton is completely free. You can use Symfony by just adding a symfony/symfony dependency and creating your own directory structure.
This means that while most projects start with the skeleton, projects can tweak it to fit their needs. Also, some bundles included by the skeleton may be removed from the project or a project uses different settings than the skeleton.
Each time a new skeleton version is released, you can check the diff (e.g. https://github.com/symfony/symfony-standard/compare/v2.7.2...v2.7.3 ) and check the changes and apply the changes to your project whenever they're needed in your project.

Answer 2

I'm testing another approach at the moment. I've created a bash-script which is included in the composer.json at the post-install- and post-update-part. I know that has to be exists, but with this, the enduser only have to do a composer update
composer.json
[...]
"scripts": {
"post-install-cmd": [
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::buildBootstrap",
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::installRequirementsFile",
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::removeSymfonyStandardFiles",
"chmod +x init_update_app && ./init_update_app"
],
"post-update-cmd": [
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::buildBootstrap",
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::installRequirementsFile",
"Sensio\\Bundle\\DistributionBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::removeSymfonyStandardFiles",
"chmod +x update_app && ./update_app"
]
},
[...]
Post-Install:
#!/bin/bash
if ! git ls-remote origin > /dev/null; then
git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/xxx/xxx.git
fi
git fetch --tags
latestTag=$(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)
git checkout $latestTag
Post-Update:
#!/bin/bash
git fetch --tags
latestTag=$(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)
git checkout $latestTag
Any disadvantages with this approach? I know that git have to be installed but that is not the problem. The scripts could be improved by checking the existing tag to prevent checking out the same tag again or to check if git is installed...