Composer is a popular dependency manager for PHP that makes it easy to install and manage libraries in PHP projects. If you are using a hosting package without a system installation of Composer, you can install it yourself and edit access to it via the command line.

1. Navigate to the package’s main folder

Navigate to the root folder of the hosting package where you want to install Composer:

cd ~

This is usually the home folder of your user account on the server.

2. Download and install Composer

Next, use the curl command to download and install the latest version of Composer:

curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Once the installation is complete, the file composer.phar containing Composer will appear in the folder.

3. Adding the “composer” command to the user environment

In order to use Composer as a composer command, you need to create a shortcut(alias).

Open the .bashrc file that is run whenever an SSH session is established within the hosting package:

nano ~/.bashrc

Then add a comment and a command to the file:

# User specific aliases and functions

alias composer="php ~/composer.phar"

This specifies that any use of composer in the CLI will execute the php ~/composer.phar command.

4. Refresh settings

To refresh the settings without logging into SSH again, use the command:

source ~/.bashrc

This command will apply the changes to .bashrc immediately.

5. Verifying the installation

Finally, you can check that Composer has been successfully installed:

composer -V

If the installation of Composer was successful, you will see the version of Composer (example: Composer version 2.8.5).

This process has successfully installed and enabled Composer on your hosting package. Composer will now be accessible via the composer command, allowing you to easily manage PHP dependencies.