Composer dependancy not available for PHPDOX - php

Question

I am trying to install phpdox through composer.
"require": {
"phploc/phploc": "2.0.6",
"phpunit/phpunit": "4.2.4",
"pdepend/pdepend": "2.0.0",
"phpmd/phpmd": "2.0.0",
"squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "2.0.0a2",
"sebastian/phpcpd": "2.0.*#dev",
"theseer/phpdox": "0.6.6.1"
}
Which produces the following:
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.
Problem 1
- Installation request for theseer/phpdox 0.6.6.1 -> satisfiable by theseer/phpdox[0.6.6.1].
- theseer/phpdox 0.6.6.1 requires nikic/php-parser >=1.0.0 -> no matching package found.
Potential causes:
- A typo in the package name
- The package is not available in a stable-enough version according to your minimum-stability setting
However, on the packagist website it says that phpdox has a dependency nikic/php-parser: >=1.0.0 which does not exist.
How do I resolve that?

Answer 1

The package nikic/php-parser has only been tagged as a beta version 1.0, not a stable release.
theseer/phpdox does require that 1.0.0 version, however it has set minimum-stability:dev and prefer-stable:true in it's own composer.json. These settings can only be defined in the root composer.json.
Two ways to fix it:
Require the needed beta version of that package yourself: composer require nikic/php-parser:~1.0#beta would do it.
Also set the settings for minimum stability to at least "beta" and add the prefer-stable flag to avoid getting ALL packages in beta stability.
Reading the installation instructions I get the idea that you are not supposed to require this tool directly via Composer. I can't see a reason why not to do it, but this probably hasn't been anticipated. So optional step 3: Open a ticket on Github to get this issue fixed.