---
title: "When running composer on a Cloud IDE, it gets killed"
date: "2022-01-28T00:27:56+00:00"
summary:
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/92416-when-running-composer-cloud-ide-it-gets-killed"
id: "ebe466d9-9954-4201-9eaf-eea3f8d525f0"
---

Table of contents will be added

**Issue**
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When trying to use the \`composer update\` or a similar command on an Acquia Cloud IDE, that command does not complete and the terminal shows a failure message "**Killed**".

**Resolution** 
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1) Ensure you are using version 2 of composer, since it uses less memory than version 1. You can check the version by running "**composer --version**". On the Cloud IDE, composer is version 2 by Default, but you may be running the **composer1** command. In this case, replace this with **composer** and see if that helps.

2) Try running composer by prefixing it with a **COMPOSER\_MEMORY\_LIMIT=-1** directive, which allows composer to expand to the maximum available memory. For example: **COMPOSER\_MEMORY\_LIMIT=-1 composer update** 

3) If you've already tried the above 2 options and still get the "Killed" messages on the Cloud IDE, then sadly your project may have just become be too complex for the Cloud IDE to handle:

*   Composer is known to need a lot of memory to figure out dependencies and do its job.
*   The IDE memory limit is 4GB, including all the services plus the Composer or any other commands you are trying to run within it.
*   You can read more about the available Cloud IDE resources here: [https://docs.acquia.com/ide/resources/](/node/55953).

In this case, you will need to find an alternative place to execute Composer commands, for example, by using a local development environment (on a PC, Laptop, etc.) instead doing that on the IDE. You can then push the results into your Git repository, then pull down from Git back into the IDE if needed.

**Cause**
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This happens generally for larger or more complex applications, composer needs more memory than all of the available memory in the Cloud IDE.