daily-email: add 2023-10-10

Why use Composer to manage Drupal dependencies?

src/content/daily-email/2023-10-10.md

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+---
+title: >
+  Why use Composer to manage Drupal dependencies?
+pubDate: 2023-10-10
+permalink: >
+  archive/2023/10/10/why-use-composer-to-manage-drupal-dependencies
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - drupal
+  - php
+  - phpc
+  - composer
+---
+
+One of the initial negatives when Drupal 8 launched was introducing Composer, PHP's dependency manager, and how it could affect non-technical users.
+
+When I started doing Drupal, I downloaded the .tar.gz or .zip file of Drupal, extracted it, and placed it within my project.
+
+I did the same for any additional modules I needed.
+
+To update them, I needed to delete my files and repeat the process of downloading and replacing them.
+
+## Drush
+
+Then, instead of doing it manually, I used Drush, the "Drupal shell", to download the files. This saved some time, but it still has down-sides.
+
+What if you needed to install a module like Pathauto, which has dependencies you also need to download and install?
+
+With Drush or downloading the files manually, you'd need to download the dependencies separately.
+
+## Composer
+
+Composer is a dependency manager, which means it can handle these dependencies for us.
+
+It looks at each project's `composer.json` file to find its dependencies and downloads them.
+
+For example, to install Pathauto, you run `composer require drupal/pathauto`.
+
+Within its output, you'll see this:
+
+```plain
+Package operations: 3 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
+  - Downloading drupal/token (1.12.0)
+  - Downloading drupal/ctools (4.0.4)
+  - Downloading drupal/pathauto (1.12.0)
+```
+
+As well as Pathauto, it's downloading its dependencies - ctools and pathauto.
+
+Instead of downloading three modules, we can do it with one command.
+
+In fact, we don't need to know what its dependencies are - Composer will do that.
+
+Also, updating the modules is just another simple command - `composer update`.
+
+While it may be intimidating to non-technical users, learning a few simple commands makes installing and updating modules much easier!