Acquia Automation: Composer builds¶

Requirements¶

Installations of Drupal 8 or greater must be built with a fully functional composer.json file including all code necessary to run your codebase, and containing no package conflicts.

Minimum requirements for a composer.json file for RA¶

The following outlines the minimum requirements for a composer.json file to be compatible with Remote Administration:

• The vendor/ directory must be located in the repository’s root above the docroot directory. This directory must be managed through version control, and the proper autoloading must be set up to redirect Drupal to the new vendor location. For more information, see Drupal scaffold.
• A Drupal composer.json file must specify at least the following basic information:

"repositories": {
"require": {
"require-dev": {
"conflict": {
"extra": {
"installer-paths": {

• The require section of the composer.json file needs to list Drupal core and all contributed modules and packages required to run your Drupal website.
• All Drupal code must be located within the docroot folder.
• All non-Drupal files added to any directory must either be added as a public repository, added as a private repository, excluded using drupal-scaffold, or recreated through patches declared in your composer.json.

How RA automation works with Composer¶

The Remote Administration update process performs a series of update commands against your website on the RA environment, determines any needed updates, applies the changes, and notifies you, as described in the following steps:

1. The latest production code and a copy of your production database are copied to the RA environment.
2. Your codebase is examined for a valid composer.json file above the docroot directory.
   • If a valid composer.json is located, RA will proceed with the update process.
   • If no composer.json file is located, RA will revert to applying updates using Drush. For Drupal 8 websites, refer to the important note about Drupal 8 and using Drush for updates.
3. The code is scanned for the following types of updates with the drush pm-updatestatus command:
   • Security updates for contributed modules
   • Bugfix updates for specified contributed modules
   • Bugfix and security updates for Acquia-managed modules
4. The most recent version of Composer is temporarily installed on the RA environment.
5. Composer updates are determined and applied with the composer update --dry-run command in your RA environment to ensure your composer.json file has no errors preventing updates from completing. No changes are made to your codebase. If conflicts requiring resolution before applying updates are detected in your composer.json file, you will receive an Acquia Support ticket notifying you of these conflicts so you can resolve them.
6. Composer performs the composer update package/name --with-all-dependencies command to update your package to the highest available version allowed by the version constraints in your composer.json file.
7. Database updates are applied with the drush updb command.
8. To provide faster security updates, the Stage File Proxy module is enabled to mirror files—instead of copying them—from your production environment to your RA environment.
9. If new updates are identified, you will be notified with an Acquia Support ticket when these updates are ready for testing.

RA file templates¶

The Acquia RA Composer GitHub repository has an example composer.json file you can use as a starting point for creating your website’s composer.json. The repository has the following files:

• composer.json: An example file for Composer
• readme.md: How to use the composer.json
• annotated.composer.json: An annotated example file with explanations of the configuration sections

To use the example Composer file, you can download the file and copy its contents into your own composer.json file. Alternately, clone the repository and then copy the file to your website’s repository.