Composer/PHPUnit on Windows Shell

Are you tired of typing php [PATH]/composer.phar on the console all the time? Wouldn’t it be easier to just type composer and you’re done? Fortunately this isn’t very hard to configure.

Save the composer.phar file to some folder, e.g. somewhere in your “Program Files” folder. I assume it’s C:\Program Files\Composer in this little tutorial.

Add a BAT file named composer.bat to that folder, which contains:

@ECHO OFF
SET "COMPOSER_INSTALL_DIR=C:\Program Files\Composer"
@ECHO ON
php "%COMPOSER_INSTALL_DIR%\composer.phar" %*

Add C:\Program Files\Composer to the PATH setting of you operating system. If you don’t know how it works, just Google it.

Note: If PHP isn’t runable on your console via a simple php, you should also add your PHP folder to the PATH setting. Otherwise you have to write the full path to php.exe in the BAT file.

Now you can run the Composer commands from any folder:

composer self-update  # (may only work if the console runs with admin privileges)
composer install
composer update
...

The same works for PHPUnit’s phar distribution.