How To Install Composer on Ubuntu 22.04 [Quickstart]

Introduction

In this quickstart guide, we’ll install Composer on an Ubuntu 22.04 server.

For a more detailed version of this tutorial, with more explanations of each step, please refer to How To Install and Use Composer on Ubuntu 22.04.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you’ll need access to an Ubuntu 22.04 server as a sudo user.

Step 1 — Install Dependencies

Start by updating your package manager cache and installing the required dependencies, including php-cli:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php-cli unzip

Step 2 — Download and Install Composer

Make sure you’re in your home directory, then retrieve the Composer installer using curl:

cd ~
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer -o /tmp/composer-setup.php

Next, we’ll verify that the downloaded installer matches the SHA-384 hash for the latest installer found on the Composer Public Keys / Signatures page.

Using curl, fetch the latest signature and store it in a shell variable:

HASH=`curl -sS https://composer.github.io/installer.sig`

Now execute the following PHP code to verify that the installation script is safe to run:

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', '/tmp/composer-setup.php') === '$HASH') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

You’ll see the following output:

Installer verified

The following command will download and install Composer as a system-wide command named composer, under /usr/local/bin:

sudo php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

You’ll see output similar to this:

Output
All settings correct for using Composer
Downloading...

Composer (version 2.3.5) successfully installed to: /usr/local/bin/composer
Use it: php /usr/local/bin/composer

To test your installation, run:

composer

Output
   ______
  / ____/___  ____ ___  ____  ____  ________  _____
 / /   / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ __ \/ ___/ _ \/ ___/
/ /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ (__  )  __/ /
\____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\____/____/\___/_/
                    /_/
Composer version 2.3.5 2022-04-13 16:43:00

Usage:
  command [options] [arguments]

Options:
  -h, --help                     Display help for the given command. When no command is given display help for the list command
  -q, --quiet                    Do not output any message
  -V, --version                  Display this application version
      --ansi|--no-ansi           Force (or disable --no-ansi) ANSI output
  -n, --no-interaction           Do not ask any interactive question
      --profile                  Display timing and memory usage information
      --no-plugins               Whether to disable plugins.
      --no-scripts               Skips the execution of all scripts defined in composer.json file.
  -d, --working-dir=WORKING-DIR  If specified, use the given directory as working directory.
      --no-cache                 Prevent use of the cache
  -v|vv|vvv, --verbose           Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
...

This verifies that Composer was successfully installed on your system and is available system-wide.

Related Tutorials

Here are links to more detailed guides related to this tutorial:

• Initial Server Setup on Ubuntu 22.04
• How To Install and Use Composer on Ubuntu 22.04
• How To Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP (LEMP stack) on Ubuntu 22.04
• How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 22.04