composer/doc/articles/troubleshooting.md

<!--
    tagline: Solving problems
-->
# Troubleshooting

This is a list of common pitfalls on using Composer, and how to avoid them.

## General

1. When facing any kind of problems using Composer, be sure to **work with the
   latest version**. See [self-update](../03-cli.md#self-update) for details.

2. Make sure you have no problems with your setup by running the installer's
   checks via `curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --check`.

3. Ensure you're **installing vendors straight from your `composer.json`** via
   `rm -rf vendor && composer update -v` when troubleshooting, excluding any
   possible interferences with existing vendor installations or `composer.lock`
   entries.

## Package not found

1. Double-check you **don't have typos** in your `composer.json` or repository
   branches and tag names.

2. Be sure to **set the right
   [minimum-stability](../04-schema.md#minimum-stability)**. To get started or be
   sure this is no issue, set `minimum-stability` to "dev".

3. Packages **not coming from [Packagist](https://packagist.org/)** should
   always be **defined in the root package** (the package depending on all
   vendors).

4. Use the **same vendor and package name** throughout all branches and tags of
   your repository, especially when maintaining a third party fork and using
   `replace`.

## Package not found in travis-ci
1. Check the trouble shooting for "Package not Found" above
2. The problem might be that composer is not able to detect the version of the 
   package properly. If it's a git clone it's alright and it will see the current 
   branch, but on travis it does shallow clones so that probably fails. The best 
   solution for travis is to define the version you're on via an environment var 
   called COMPOSER_ROOT_VERSION. You set it to "dev-master" for example to define 
   the root package's version as "dev-master".
   Use: `before_script: COMPOSER_ROOT_VERSION=dev-master composer install` to export
   the variable for the call to composer

## Memory limit errors

If composer shows memory errors on some commands:

    PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of XXXXXX bytes exhausted <...>

The PHP `memory_limit` should be increased.

> **Note:** Composer internally increases the `memory_limit` to `512M`.
> If you have memory issues when using composer, please consider [creating
> an issue ticket](https://github.com/composer/composer/issues) so we can look into it.

To get the current `memory_limit` value, run:

    php -r "echo ini_get('memory_limit').PHP_EOL;"

Try increasing the limit in your `php.ini` file (ex. `/etc/php5/cli/php.ini` for
Debian-like systems):

    ; Use -1 for unlimited or define an explicit value like 512M
    memory_limit = -1

Or, you can increase the limit with a command-line argument:

    php -d memory_limit=-1 composer.phar <...>

## "The system cannot find the path specified" (Windows)

1. Open regedit.
2. Search for an ```AutoRun``` key inside ```HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor```
   or ```HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor```.
3. Check if it contains any path to non-existent file, if it's the case, just remove them.