Open source alternatives to Composer

One project on starwire does the same job. Ranked by how much of what Composer does each one covers, read from its README and website. Ties go to the most active.

What Composer does

Install PHP package dependenciescore
Lock versions for reproducible installscore
Autoloading
Package registry
Scripts
Version constraints

Each dot in the table is one job, in this order. Square dots are core jobs and count double. Full means yes, half means partly. "See the evidence" under a project shows the line behind each one. Coverage is what a project documents, not how well it works or how hard it is to move to. How we score this

Project	Covers	Stars	Commits, 12 weeks	Last release	Closed vs opened	Setup	License
pomposerCaching PHP package manager with global storage and shared dependencies	Replaces it69%	26+1	0	17 months ago	Too few	Uses the terminal	MIT
Covers 1 of 2 core jobs. Partly: Lock versions for reproducible installs; Version constraints. Not shown: Package registry.See the evidence Install PHP package dependenciescoreYesinstalls dependencies once and shares them globally across projects Lock versions for reproducible installscorePartlyworks best when a `composer.lock` file is present AutoloadingYesGenerates a complete, optimized autoloader (PSR-4, classmap, files). Package registryNot shownNeither the README nor the website mentions it. ScriptsYesExecute post-install scripts Version constraintsPartlymay fail on complex version constraints

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