Version Git Repo for Composer Use - Git/Composer - php

Question

Scenario
I have a Plugin in PHP that I've written and want to keep it as a private repository. I want to set up the versioning in Git. I know there are tags for this, but don't know how the convention works for Composer.
Current composer.json for my package/plugin:
{
"name": "Test/Upload",
"description": "Useful functions for image uploading.",
"minimum-stability": "dev",
"require": {
"php": ">=5.3.0"
}
}
Current composer.json for my project to include the above package/plugin:
{
"name": "multistepform",
"require": {
"cakephp/cakephp": "2.6.*",
"cakephp/debug_kit": "2.2.*"
},
"config": {
"vendor-dir": "Vendor/"
}
}
Currently I have no tags in the package/plugin.
Qs
1) Does Composer require tags in a repository in order for it to use it?
2) How should one tag their private repository for use with Composer?
3) How to include this package in a different project (using the above context)?

Answer 1

Just to add to #tigrang's comment and list out the explicit steps:
add your git repo using "repositories" in your composer.json
tag your package with a version number (I suggest using Semantic versioning, Keep A Changelog and my git plugin git-semver)
VERSION=0.1.0 && git tag ${VERSION} && git push origin ${VERSION}
add your package under require
you can also use "dev-master" in your require if you don't want to add version tags and want to get the latest changes to package when running composer update. This requires setting:
minimum-stability: dev
Final composer.json:
{
"name": "multistepform",
"repositories": [
{
"type": "git",
"url": "https://github.com/Test/Upload.git"
}
],
"require": {
"cakephp/cakephp": "2.6.*",
"cakephp/debug_kit": "2.2.*",
"Test/Upload": "0.1.*"
},
"config": {
"vendor-dir": "Vendor/"
}
}