composer dependency json config - php

Question

I have the following json configs for composer.phar. Unfortunately, I get this error, and I don't understand why:
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 myproject/cmsapp dev-master -> satisfiable by myproject/cmsapp[dev-master].
- myproject/cmsapp dev-master requires zendframework/zendframework dev-master -> 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
see <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/composer-dev/_g3ASeIFlrc/discussion> for more details.
Read <http://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/troubleshooting.md> for further common problems.
cms config:
{
"name": "myproject\/cms",
"description": "myproject CMS Tool",
"license": "GPL",
"keywords": [
"myproject",
"cms",
"framework",
"zf2"
],
"homepage": "http:\/\/avadon.com\/myproject\/cms\/",
"require": {
"php": ">=5.3.3",
"myproject/cmsapp": "dev-master"
},
"repositories": {
"myproject/cmsapp": {
"type": "git",
"url": "https:\/\/github.com\/myproject\/cmsapp.git"
}
}
}
cmsapp config:
{
"name": "myproject/cmsapp",
"repositories": {
"zendframework/zendframework": {
"type": "git",
"url": "https://github.com/zendframework/zf2.git"
}
},
"require": {
"php": ">=5.3.3",
"zendframework/zendframework" : "dev-master"
}
}
Can anyone try and explain to me this error?

Answer 1

You are using a software from a development branch. This will only be allowed if you configure your composer.json to accept development software. Usually you shouldn't do this.
Especially including the development branch from Zend framework is likely to break your software more than once if large enough updates occur. If you want the latest and greatest, you'd still have to call composer update all the time to fetch the newest commits, so it's less error-prone to simply require something like "2." for "any version 2 framework", or maybe even stricter "2.3." for a released, working version of the 2.3 version line.
The same would be true for your own software - do tag it!
But if you want to experience unintentional software incompatibilities yourself, you can add a "minimum-stability":"dev" to your cms config's composer.json and include all development versions of the world.