How to use Composer on Kualo servers

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP that handles your project's libraries, packages, and class autoloading. Kualo servers have both major versions pre-installed so you can use whichever your project needs.

Type either command after logging in via SSH to get started.

Choosing the right Composer version

Check your project's documentation or composer.json to confirm which version it requires. Most modern projects work best with Composer 2.x, which offers better performance and stricter dependency resolution. Some older projects may still depend on Composer 1.x.

Setting up a Bash alias

If your scripts or tooling call composer directly but your project needs version 2.x, you can create a Bash alias so that composer points to composer2.

1. Connect to your account via SSH.
2. Open your .bashrc file in a text editor. If the file does not exist, this command will create it:

nano ~/.bashrc

3. Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following line:

alias composer='/usr/local/bin/composer2'

4. Save the file and exit the editor (Ctrl+O, then Ctrl+X in nano).
5. Apply the change to your current session:

source ~/.bashrc

The alias will now be active. Any new SSH session will also pick it up automatically.

Specifying the Composer binary path in your application

Some applications let you configure the path to the Composer binary directly in their settings. If yours does, set it to:

/usr/local/bin/composer2

This tells the application to use Composer 2.x without requiring a Bash alias.