composer: Error when install PHPUnit via composer on shared linux hosting

I’ve installed composer successfully on my Macbook, but when I tried to install composer on my shared linux hosting with “php composer.phar install”, I got the following error.

# php composer.phar install
Content-type: text/html


Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'ErrorException' with message 'Undefined index: argv' in phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Input/ArgvInput.php:57
Stack trace:
#0 phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Input/ArgvInput.php(57): Composer\Util\ErrorHandler::handle(8, 'Undefined index...', 'phar:///home2/i...', 57, Array)
#1 phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Application.php(98): Symfony\Component\Console\Input\ArgvInput->__construct()
#2 phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/src/Composer/Console/Application.php(82): Symfony\Component\Console\Application->run(NULL, Object(Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput))
#3 phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/bin/composer(39): Composer\Console\Application->run()
#4 /my_web_apps/system/composer.phar(15): require('phar:///ho in phar:///my_web_apps/system/composer.phar/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Input/ArgvInput.php on line 57

Here is my composer.json

{
    "name": "phpunit",
    "description": "PHPUnit",
    "require": {
        "phpunit/phpunit": "3.7.*"
    }
}

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Thx.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 11 years ago
Comments: 18 (7 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@curry684 Thanks for this info. I was able to find one cli version of php at /opt/php-7.0/bin/php. I could not move composer.phar to /usr/local/bin/composer due to restrictions so I ended up making a .bash_profile with the code:

alias composer='/opt/php-7.0/bin/php ~/composer.phar'

Now it works fine. Thanks again for the info.

mohsin on Mar 15, 2016

For anyone coming to this issue who don’t have control over their hosting (ie. shared) but also do not have the php-cli command, try the following.

$ php -d register_argc_argv=1 "./composer.phar" install

Don’t forget to give a massive thumbs up to the hosting providers that think giving CLI access to PHP is “dangerous”… And yet still give you SSH access 👍

zanbaldwin on Jun 5, 2014

@curry684, @SaifurRahmanMohsin your advice helped me. cPanel environment running multiple PHP versions. I needed to specify the php.ini config file as referenced below.

locate -br ^php$

alias composer='/opt/cpanel/ea-php70/root/usr/bin/php -c ~/php.ini ~/bin/composer'

into .bashrc

morgzz on Mar 25, 2017

@merhawifissehaye no more issues that if you give people a CLI access to your server but give them the CGI sapi. the security implication is not the fact that the php cli is available, but the fact that the user has access to your server

stof on Oct 23, 2015

php-cli composer.phar <command>

hdushku on Aug 25, 2015