A more efficient way to test extensions in development

[amorim-dm]

Hi, I would like to know if there is a solution for this project to test updates in external extensions efficiently. I'm using a composer-based project and I need to update it in the Packagist every time. Is there a better way to test the updates locally?

Any help would be amazing.

[dosubot[bot]]

You don't need to publish your extension to Packagist every time you want to test updates locally. The most efficient way is to use Composer's "path" repositories, which let you link a local directory as a package source. This way, you can edit your extension code on your machine and have those changes reflected immediately in your Magento project.

Here's how you can do it:

1. In your Magento project's composer.json, add a "repositories" entry like:

   "repositories": [
     {
       "type": "path",
       "url": "../path/to/your/extension"
     }
   ]

   Replace the URL with the relative or absolute path to your extension.

2. Require your extension as usual (e.g., composer require vendor/module-name:*), and Composer will use your local code.

3. If you're using docker-magento, you can mount your extension directory into the container using Docker volumes, or use the SSH/SFTP sync feature supported since v40.0.0 for direct file sync from your IDE. This allows you to develop and test without any need to republish or reinstall from Packagist. See the discussion here and the README for SSH/SFTP sync details.

4. Use the provided CLI commands like bin/composer to run Composer inside the container, and bin/copytocontainer or bin/copyfromcontainer if you need to sync files between host and container.

This setup lets you iterate quickly on your extension code and test changes in your Magento environment without the overhead of publishing to Packagist each time.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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