On September 1, 2025, support for Composer 1 ends. For many of us, this is no cause for concern – Composer 2 is already well established, powerful, and used in countless projects. Nevertheless, this moment marks the end of an era. Composer fundamentally changed the PHP ecosystem – for the better.
Before Composer – a Wild Landscape
Anyone who remembers the time before Composer will recall lots of manual work, custom solutions, and plenty of headaches. There was no standardized tool for dependency management. Some used PEAR, others manually pulled libraries into their projects or worked with Git submodules. The result was a situation in which everyone did their own thing. A simple update could throw the entire project off balance. Reproducible builds? More wishful thinking than reality.
In this environment, it was difficult to develop large or even modular applications efficiently. What was missing was not just tooling, but above all the conventions and standards that sustain an ecosystem. This is precisely where Composer came in – and, in my view, it saved PHP.
Composer Changes Everything
When Composer appeared, it brought exactly what PHP was missing: a central tool that made managing dependencies simple, reproducible, and transparent. The introduction of composer.json and composer.lock laid the groundwork for modern PHP projects. Developers could now declare which packages they needed, and Composer handled the rest of the magic – resolving dependencies, setting up autoloading, and safely integrating them into existing applications. Its introduction also went hand in hand with the PSR standards at the time. It is no coincidence that the first PSR standard (PSR-0) standardized autoloading.
Composer was not just a tool, but a real game changer. Combined with Packagist as a central package source, it made it possible to access, share, and version thousands of packages – all with a simple command. The community grew, best practices spread, and modern frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, and Zend could build on a stable foundation. Previously, you could not simply install components from different frameworks in a PHP application without stumbling over individual autoloaders.
The Right Timing
Looking back, it is remarkable how perfectly timed Composer's arrival in the PHP world was. Just as the need for better modularization and professional software engineering was growing, Composer provided the answer. Instead of maintaining lots of small, isolated solutions, the community could agree on a standard. This led not only to greater consistency but also to an enormous wave of innovation.
Composer quickly established itself as the backbone of the modern PHP workflow. New projects started directly with composer init, existing ones were migrated, and entire frameworks and CMS platforms such as Drupal, TYPO3, and Magento integrated Composer deeply into their infrastructure. Magento, however, only really embraced Composer with version 2. Before that, you had to figure out for yourself how to get Composer into a Magento 1 project. But once you understood what it did, you definitely wanted Composer in your project.
Composer 2 – a Worthy Successor
Composer 2 took the tool significantly further. The performance improvements were impressive: installations became much faster, memory consumption dropped, and large projects became more manageable. At the same time, many useful features were added to make everyday work easier – such as more precise error messages, better platform checks, and smarter dependency resolution.
For many projects, the move to Composer 2 went smoothly. The documentation was clear and the migration paths were well described. The Composer maintainers did an excellent job here: they not only provided a new tool but also made sure the transition was manageable for the community.
Version 2 also introduced an interface for accessing package data and dependencies directly from PHP. Previously, you had to gather that information yourself.
Saying Goodbye to Composer 1 – a Logical Step
Ending support for Composer 1 now is the logical consequence. No tool can be developed and maintained forever – especially when most of its users have long since moved to the newer version. Composer 1 served us well, but the world keeps turning. Security, performance, and maintainability clearly favor focusing on Composer 2.
Rather than mourning this ending, we should see it as a sign of maturity. It shows that Composer and the community behind it are not standing still, but continually improving the tool. Letting go of old baggage is a sign of strength – and an invitation to us developers to move along and keep evolving too.
We say thank you, "Composer 1". You helped us for many years. You are now making room (on the Packagist servers) for the fast world of Composer 2 (which we have hopefully all been using for a long time already).
Looking Beyond Our Own Backyard
Anyone who works with other programming languages quickly realizes what a treasure we have in Composer. In Python, pip, pipenv, and poetry compete for dominance. In JavaScript, there is a constant shift between npm, Yarn, and pnpm. In Go, Go Modules are useful but still relatively young. Rust has a strong tool in Cargo, but it is tightly bound to the ecosystem.
Composer, by contrast, has been reliable, stable, and well thought out for over a decade. It offers clear standards, clean versioning, a strong central repository, and excellent integration into the PHP workflow. That is anything but a given – and a genuine distinguishing feature for PHP.
Thank You, Composer Team
This moment is a good opportunity to pause and say thank you. Thank you to the Composer team, who have spent years working with persistence, foresight, and attention to detail to make life easier for millions of developers. You have not just created a tool, but set an entire ecosystem in motion. Without you, PHP would not be what it is today: a modern, scalable, and powerful language for web development at the highest level.
Your dedication should not be taken for granted. You have combined technical excellence with pragmatism while always keeping the community in mind. Saying goodbye to Composer 1 shows once again that you have the courage to embrace change and the expertise to implement it well.
Conclusion
Composer has taken the PHP ecosystem to a new level. It brought order to chaos, established standards, and made developing in PHP easier, safer, and more professional. With Composer 2, the journey continues – faster, more modern, better. The end of support for Composer 1 on September 1, 2025, is no cause for concern, but a sign of progress.
As a developer who has worked with PHP for many years, all I can say is: thank you. Thank you for a tool that not only takes work off our hands but also shows us what good tooling can look like. Without Compose