Version constraints for optional dependencies

davetodave178

Let's imagine the following situation:

I'm developing on Extension A and have Extension B included as an optional dependency. I've now made some change in logic in Extension A which requires a recent version of Extension B (if it's enabled). The issue which led to me writing this post is that sometimes I've forgotten to update the version of Extension B, which led to me (sort of) breaking my local dev instances a couple of times.

Therefore, I propose to require a version constraint to be defined and implemented for optional dependencies in extensions, just as they are for required and dev dependencies. Though for most situations, the wildcard constraint * can be used.

Opinions? Would this be desirable for 2.0?

clarkwinkelmann

It's also something I would love to see!

Somewhat related to this, I think we should at some point define our own extension version constraint system outside of Composer's, so that extension can tell which other extension(s) they want but not hard-code the constraint. Often, extensions (in their entirety or sometimes only a subset of their features) can still be compatible outside of the defined range of extensions or Flarum version and we have seen that using Composer dependencies for that is not always easy to keep up to date or use properly, leading to overly strict constraints. I think users should be allowed to keep running extensions that are marked as incompatible if they wish without it bricking the Composer dependency tree. Of course this should be protected with proper warnings and disclaimers.