When you use Composer to manage dependencies in a PHP project, it installs packages in the vendor
directory of your project. The vendor
directory is created in the root of your project when you run the composer install
or composer update
command.
Inside the vendor
directory, Composer creates a folder for each installed package, containing all the files and code needed for that specific package to function correctly within your project. Composer also generates an autoload.php
file in the vendor
directory, which handles the autoloading of classes from the installed packages.
The vendor
directory is essential for keeping the project’s dependencies separate from your own codebase. This approach helps manage dependencies more efficiently and avoids conflicts between different packages.
It’s important to note that you should not modify or commit the vendor
directory to your version control system (e.g., Git). Instead, you should include the composer.json
and composer.lock
files in version control, which allow you to recreate the vendor
directory and its exact dependencies on other machines when needed.