Creating Installer Commands for Laravel Packages

The Laravel Package Tools package by Spatie added a nifty feature we wanted to help share with the community: streamlined install commands for Laravel packages.

Typically, when installing a Laravel community package, the README will have instructions for publishing config files, migrations, etc. With Laravel Package Tools, you can now define a dedicated install command to automate all that:

$package
    ->name('your-package')
    ->hasConfigFile()
    ->hasInstallCommand(function(InstallCommand $command) {
        $command
            ->publishConfigFile()
            ->publishMigrations()
            ->askToRunMigrations()
            ->copyAndRegisterServiceProviderInApp()
            ->askToStarRepoOnGitHub();
    });

Using a dedicated install command, your users only need to run one command instead of manually doing everyday installation tasks. Using the above package name, that would look like:

php artisan your-package:install

The install command feature also includes startWith() and endWith() methods to add custom functionality to your install command.

Neat!

To get started with this package, check out spatie/laravel-package-tools on GitHub. Also, check out Creating installer commands for Laravel packages by the author Freek Van der Herten for background details of why this feature was added, including examples.