php

Install PHP as per Add apt signing keys to debian, the right way.

PHP is not kept up to date on distros but it can be done by using the "Sury" repo.

NB: If running Devuan, you're going to need to install a work-around package to get rid of the need for a full systemd install due to the dependency added by the sury site author to need the systemd-tmpfiles package which is used to delete temporary files. Really.

apt-get install systemd-standalone-tmpfiles

Cheat sheet for using composer init to create your composer.json.

https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#init

Composer can have packages installed system-wide, such as the infinitely useful and should be included in core already, Prestissimo which greatly speeds up install and updates of other packages.

NB: This appears not to work. Can symlink a user's ~/.composer to the directory to share things, but it doesn't work entirely brilliantly.

Download "signed" installer for PHP Composer.

Signature is in quotes because this really doesn't prove or provide any kind of signature or authentication - it's just a SHA384 hash of the installer executable. The only possible security is that the installer and signature are available via different web servers, but this isn't enforced. A real signature would be better. Every commit is signed which makes the situation even more confusing.

This is mostly because I can't remember how to do this all the time.

The ImageCache preset is 'vpthumb' in this case.