Globally install PHP command-line tools with Composer

We are spoiled with all the great PHP command-line tools available these days. PHPUnit and Codeception for testing and Phinx for migrations, just to name a few. With Composer its easy to add to your project, but then you end up having to issue commands like php /path/to/my/project/vendor/bin/phpunit when you would prefer to issue phpunit. Also, it's annoying to have to manually add PHPUnit to every project you work on. Here is a better solution:

1. Create a dummy Composer project within your home directory

2. Add its vendor/bin directory to your path

How-To #

In your home directory create a directory called composer-packages which contains the following composer.json file:

{
  "require": {
    "phpunit/phpunit": "3.7.*",
    "codeception/codeception": "*",
    "robmorgan/phinx": "*"
  }
}

In that directory run composer install

Then, add the following line to your .bashrc:

export PATH=~/composer-packages/vendor/bin:$PATH

After restarting your terminal, you can issue codecept, phpunit or phinx from any directory on your computer. Cool!

Bonus #

In my setup, for bonus points, all this stuff lives in my dotfiles on GitHub. Since every machine I work on has a clone of my dotfiles, with just one composer update I can have all my PHP tools globally installed on any machine.