How to remove unused dependencies from composer?

I installed a package with composer, and it installed many other packages as dependencies.

Now I uninstalled the main package with composer remove packageauthor/packagename, but all the old dependencies were not removed. I expected composer to clean up and only keep packages that are required according to composer.json and their dependencies.

How can I force composer to clean up and remove all unused packages ?

Solution 1:

The right way to do this is:

composer remove jenssegers/mongodb --update-with-dependencies

I must admit the flag here is not quite obvious as to what it will do.

Update

composer remove jenssegers/mongodb

As of v1.0.0-beta2 --update-with-dependencies is the default and is no longer required.

Solution 2:

In fact, it is very easy.

composer update

will do all this for you, but it will also update the other packages.

To remove a package without updating the others, specifiy that package in the command, for instance:

composer update monolog/monolog

will remove the monolog/monolog package.

Nevertheless, there may remain some empty folders or files that cannot be removed automatically, and that have to be removed manually.

Solution 3:

following commands will do the same perfectly

rm -rf vendor

composer install 

Solution 4:

Just run composer install - it will make your vendor directory reflect dependencies in composer.lock file.

In other words - it will delete any vendor which is missing in composer.lock.

Please update the composer itself before running this.