Comment by Joe Clark on "What PHP framework would you choose in 2016 and why?"

If I had to choose, Laravel would be my answer. However, I caveat that with the fact that I first looked at Laravel at version 4 and it was easy to install, set up and get going with. That changed with Laravel 5. I took another crack at it not too long ago and the installation and setup was a lot more painful than previously. It took several hours to get up and running, a far different experience than before. Historically, I've had bad experiences with composer, which is how Laravel is installed. I don't know why. Composer is supposed to be this great thing for installing stuff with PHP. For me, it's been nothing but a royal pain. Nearly every time something goes very wrong.

I'm going off on a tangent. I like the idea of Laravel. I liked Laravel 4. I think I don't like composer.

I don't remember the specifics, so I went into my Arch Linux box today and tried an install. Right from the start there's problems. My Arch Linux box is a clean install. So, had to install composer. I'm a complete composer newbie because I've had problems with it and have given up on trying to fight it. But here I am again.

So, I installed composer. Next, I installed laravel.

Laravel documentation says:

Make sure to place the $HOME/.composer/vendor/bin directory (or the equivalent directory for your OS) in your $PATH so the laravel executable can be located by your system.

There is no $HOME/.composer directory. Turns out, it's in $HOME/.config/composer. Took several minutes of digging to discover this path. That's the first thing.

Now for creating an application. "laravel new whatever". I get: Crafting application... sh: composer: command not found

composer IS in my PATH. I just ran it to install laravel! So, WHAT THE FUDGE!??!!?!

Ok, back go the beginning. What did I do wrong with the composer installation? I mean, it worked fine to install laravel, so it must be installed okay, right? Wrong. I installed locally and apparently, laravel doesn't like that. Had to move composer to /usr/local/bin.

(NOTE: Having to hit Shift-ENTER for a new line here on hashnode is a pain. ENTER submits the post before I'm ready and I keep forgetting Shift-ENTER for a new line!!!!)

Finally, got the application created. I'm into this 30 minutes already. Should have been done in less than 5. But whatever. At this point, I have other things to do today, so am not going to spend more time with this. But, you get the picture.

My other issues with composer historically had to do with dependencies. Errors that indicate that dependencies are not found, and I'd have to go locate them and install them... stuff like that. For a dependency manager, I have not at all been impressed.

I may use it in the future, but when a technology that is supposed to make the job easier ends up making it harder, I tend to stay away from it. I know that in future employment, I'll probably be forced to use it. For now, I avoid it if I can. I don't have time for the frustrations it gives me.

EDIT: See, an issue like this bugs me but since it's Sunday, I had some time to work on this. Since I was working on a clean Linux install, I had to do some system updates and install and configure Apache. Took a couple of hours, but finally saw the Laravel page in my browser. End-to-end, just getting up and running with a clean install of everything took approximately three and a half hours. Not bad, but could be better. Composer and permissions took me the longest. Kept getting 403 errors in Apache, so had to figure that one out.

I still say Laravel is the best framework to start with, even if getting up and running is a bit painful. My pain, of course, was not due to Laravel itself.

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