"composer search" should return more popular packages first (or better match namespaces in name-only mode)

[dkarlovi]

Searching for

composer search ^laravel -N

returns all sorts of packages, but laravel/ is the most obvious example what one would like to see here.

If I search

composer search ^laravel/ -N

I get better matching results. These two queries should behave basically in the same way, this type of search is similar to as-you-type auto-suggest you'd get on Google or some e-commerce site.

The reason is in #10320, when you do

composer require larav<TAB>

it will auto-complete to

composer require laravel-

because it's offering more than 150 laravel--prefixed packages in front of laravel/*.

So, either:

• sort by package downloads by default (?)
• more tightly match namespaces (namely, laravel/ is a better match to the query laravel than laravel-foo/ is)
• both (?)

[dkarlovi]

Thinking about this further, sort by popularity might also not provide the correct behaviour for completion. For example, let's say you actually want laravue, you'd never get it because Laravel would always win.

Maybe we need a special search which returns just deduplicated namespaces, then we drill into the namespace with the name search? 🤔

[Seldaek]

A special vendor search type might be valuable anyway as it'd make the returned list quite a bit smaller.

[dkarlovi]

@Seldaek how would this work? Would Packagist need to get this as a feature and then Composer 2.3 detects / expects it? Not sure how the aligning with Packagist works here.

[dkarlovi]

@Seldaek not sure this one should already be closed since it's discussing the sort too, which is AFAIK still in discussion?

[Seldaek]

I figured #10320 is enough as we'll need to solve problems there before merging it.