Use PHPUnit from phar instead of vendor folder

[alfredbez]

Hi there,
we have a kind of special setup in our project:

• We use Codeception for functional/acceptance tests in our project. Codeception is installed via composer and thus brings the dependency to PHPUnit (currently in v9) into our project
• We have a dedicated folder for our unit testing setup. PHPUnit is installed there as a PHAR in v10

When PHPStan analyses our unit tests, it sometimes reports issues, because it uses PHPUnit v9 for the analysis, but we use v10 for executing the tests actually.

I know that it's possible to load the PHAR like so:

parameters:
    bootstrapFiles:
        - bootstrap.php
        - phar://../phpunit/phpunit/vendor/autoload.php

If I try to run the analysis with this setting I get this error:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught TypeError: substr(): Argument #1 ($string) must be of type string, null given in phar:///Users/bez/projects/work/project-b2c/.tools/phpstan/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/File/FileHelper.php:85

However, it would mix up the classes from the PHAR with the ones from the vendor directory.

Our setup looks like this:

├── .tools
│   ├── phpunit
│   │   ├─ ...
│   │   └─ phpunit # <- this is the PHAR
│   └── phpstan
│       ├── config.neon
│       ├── composer.json
│       ├── composer.lock
│       └── vendor
├── ...
├── src
├── tests
├── composer.json
├── composer.lock
└── vendor
    └── phpunit/phpunit

[ondrejmirtes]

Please create a small repository that shows the problem, so I can look into it.

[ondrejmirtes]

1. There's no reason to isolate PHPStan in a tools directory. Please do yourself a favour and move it to the main projects `composer.json:

--- a/composer.json
+++ b/composer.json
@@ -7,5 +7,8 @@
             "App\\": "src/",
             "AppTests\\": "tests/"
         }
+    },
+    "require-dev": {
+        "phpstan/phpstan": "^1.10"
     }
 }

2. You're trying to hack around the fact that Codeception v4 only supports PHPUnit v9. That's a bad idea. You're combining incompatible projects by trying to run PHPUnit v10 PHAR. Let's say that PHPUnit 10 contains some BC break that breaks Codeception v4. You're at a risk of that.

You should install Codeception v5 that supports PHPUnit 10. If I do that in your project: composer require codeception/codeception:^5 -W

I can suddenly run PHPUnit normally:

$ vendor/bin/phpunit tests
PHPUnit 10.5.9 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

Runtime:       PHP 8.3.1

.                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 00:00.007, Memory: 4.00 MB

OK (1 test, 3 assertions)

And PHPStan also works:

$ vendor/bin/phpstan analyse tests --level 2
 1/1 [▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓] 100%

 [OK] No errors

Less hacks, more wins ;)

[alfredbez]

Thanks for the fast answer!

I'm aware that using Codeception v5 would make more sense, we're working on it, but unfortunately, it's not as easy as running a single composer require command 😉
We've separated the tools for some reasons: We recently added unit tests to our project and we wanted to use PHPUnit v10 directly for them and not go with the version that already exists in our vendor folder, but follow Sebastian Bergmann's recommendation and install PHPUnit as a PHAR. Having the PHPStan setup in a separate repository makes it possible to define more granular approver groups or auto-merge settings for renovate.

You're at a risk of that.

We never execute our unit tests with vendor/bin/phpunit, so we don't really care about BC breaks between the version from the vendor folder vs the version in the tools folder. The risk that is there indeed is the adoption of the tooling around this setup (PHPStan, PhpStorm, etc).

[ondrejmirtes]

Your risk of BC breaks is that Codeception internally uses something from PHPUnit and it relies on the PHPUnit to be v9 but instead you load Codeception v4 alongside PHPUnit v10 internals so you might break something because of that. Because Codeception v4 does not officially support PHPUnit v10.

[alfredbez]

But we don't load Codeception v4 alongside PHPUnit v10. The only place where we would load both of them would either be in PHPStan (when I include the phar as you suggested) or in the PHPUnit phar. Codeception is not aware of any PHPUnit v10 classes in our project.

[ondrejmirtes]

I see.

[ondrejmirtes]

So what I posted under the thread is the best course forward. If you insist of making the PHPUnit v10 PHAR going alongside Codeception v4, the following works:

1. Configure PHPStan correctly according to: https://phpstan.org/user-guide/discovering-symbols#phpunit-as-a-phar

--- a/tools/phpstan/config.neon
+++ b/tools/phpstan/config.neon
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 parameters:
     level: 2
     bootstrapFiles:
-        - phar://../phpunit/phpunit/vendor/autoload.php
+        - ../phpunit/phpunit

2. And uninstall PHPUnit in the root package and run composer update:

--- a/composer.json
+++ b/composer.json
@@ -7,5 +7,8 @@
             "App\\": "src/",
             "AppTests\\": "tests/"
         }
+    },
+    "replace": {
+        "phpunit/phpunit": "^9"
     }
 }