Detect and Clean Up Unchanged Vendor Files with Laravel Vendor Cleanup

Last updated on January 1st, 2026 by Yannick Lyn Fatt

Ever wondered which of your published Laravel config files you’ve actually customized? After years of development, published vendor files accumulate—some modified, many untouched, others orphaned from long-removed packages. This cruft makes your codebase harder to navigate and can cause confusion during package upgrades.

Laravel Vendor Cleanup by Chris Jones provides Artisan commands that intelligently compare your published vendor files with their originals. It strips comments, optionally normalizes whitespace, then uses SHA256 hashing to show exactly which files you've modified (with color-coded diff percentages), which are identical to vendor (safe to delete), and which are orphaned from removed packages.

Clean up cruft, track your customizations, and upgrade packages with confidence—all with simple artisan commands.

Features

Smart Comparison: Automatically strips PHP comments and optionally normalizes whitespace
Diff Percentages: See exactly how different your files are from vendor originals
Color-Coded Output: Green 🟢, Yellow 🟡, Magenta 🟣 or Red 🔴 based on the difference percentage
Safe Cleanup: Optionally delete unchanged files with confirmation
Orphan Detection: Find files from uninstalled packages
Handles Timestamps: Smart migration filename matching (strips timestamps)
Stub Support: Detects both .php and .php.stub vendor files

Available Commands

Here are the commands that are available at the time of writing:

php artisan vendor-cleanup:config
 
php artisan vendor-cleanup:migration
 
php artisan vendor-cleanup:lang
 
php artisan vendor-cleanup:view

Example

Here is an example of the output from the vendor-cleanup:config artisan command:

$ php artisan vendor-cleanup:config
 
MODIFIED
+---------------------+------------+
| File                | Difference |
+---------------------+------------+
| config/services.php | 25.7%      |
| config/app.php      | 22%        |
| config/mail.php     | 4.7%       |
| config/cache.php    | 3%         |
| config/queue.php    | 1.7%       |
| config/database.php | 0.8%       |
| config/session.php  | 0.4%       |
| config/apiroute.php | 0.1%       |
+---------------------+------------+
 
UNCHANGED (matches vendor)
+--------------------+------------------------+
| File               | File                   |
+--------------------+------------------------+
| config/auth.php    | config/filesystems.php |
| config/logging.php |                        |
+--------------------+------------------------+
 
MISSING (not published locally)
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| File                                                              | File                                       |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| laravel/boost/config/boost.php                                    | laravel/framework/config/broadcasting.php  |
| laravel/framework/config/concurrency.php                          | laravel/framework/config/cors.php          |
| laravel/framework/config/hashing.php                              | laravel/framework/config/view.php          |
| laravel/mcp/config/mcp.php                                        | laravel/tinker/config/tinker.php           |
| mrpunyapal/laravel-extended-commands/config/extended-commands.php | spatie/laravel-data/config/data.php        |
| spatie/php-structure-discoverer/config/structure-discoverer.php   | symfony/http-kernel/config/FileLocator.php |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
 
Done.