Composer Patches Laravel Package

title: Terminology weight: 30

{{< lead text="There are a few terms specific to this plugin. Understanding them before proceeding may help with understanding." >}}

{{< callout title="This document is for end-users" >}} If you're looking for developer-focused documentation about each of these components, see the [Capabilities]({{< relref "../api/capabilities.md" >}}) page in the API documentation. {{< /callout >}}

Resolvers, downloaders, and patchers are all small units of functionality that can be disabled individually or extended by other Composer plugins.

Resolver

A resolver is a component that looks for patch definitions in a particular place. If any patch definitions are found, they are added to a list maintained internally by the plugin.

An example of a resolver is \\cweagans\\Composer\\Resolver\\PatchesFile. If a [patches-file]({{< relref "../usage/configuration.md#patches-file" >}}) is configured in composer.json, the PatchesFile resolver opens the specified patches file, finds any defined patches, and adds them to the list of patches.

Downloader

A downloader is (intuitively) a component that downloads a patch. The ComposerDownloader is the default downloader and uses the same mechanism to download patches that is used by Composer to download packages.

Patcher

A patcher is a mechanism by which a downloaded patch can be applied to a package. The plugin ships with a handful of patchers in an effort to ensure that a particular system is able to apply a patch somehow. Generally, for each system program that is capable of applying a patch (in the core plugin, this is git (via git apply)), a Patcher can be defined that uses it.