[TYPO3-core] Documenting usage of Composer manifest

[Thomas Maroschik]

Hi Francois,

Am 24.03.14 21:45, schrieb François Suter:
> All system extensions now have a Composer manifest. I thought it would
> be a good idea to document this in Core APIs, but I must admit that I
> miss information about this.
>
> - should a developer include a Composer manifest in his/her extension?
> If yes, why?

Currently it is not necessary. The composer workflow is currently beeing 
established and researched by the composer team. After we figured out 
how all those gears work together we will publish guidelines for the 
community and the core. So currently it is not advised to include a 
composer.json in your own extension. If you do so unexpected behavior 
can occur.

> - what is the structure of the manifest, in particular the minimum
> information required? The naming conventions?

The schema of this manifest is described here: 
https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md

The only thing required for a TYPO3 CMS extension is the type attribute 
with the value "typo3-cms-extension". The rest should be according to 
the default composer scheme. The naming convention usually is 
{vendor}/{product}

> - what is the relation between ext_emconf.php and composer.json?

If a composer.json is not found but a ext_emconf.php is present the 
Package Management considers the package to be a typo3 extension with 
all implications. So in package management the composer.json takes 
precedence when it's available. Currently the extensionmanager does not 
consider the composer.json yet. The plan was to rebuild the EM upon 
composer and ship it via the TER once the CMS release is out.

> - is ext_emconf.php still needed? Is it planned to phase it out?

In an attempt to converge further with Flow the ext_emconf.php will 
phase out once we established the full composer workflow which includes 
a composer based variant of the TER on our own infrastructure.

> Thanks in advance for the explanations.
>
> Cheers

Thanks for all your efforts in this area :):

Greetz!

-- 
Thomas Maroschik
TYPO3 CMS Active Contributor

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