- How do I install rahul900day/laravel-console-spinner in a Laravel app?
- Install it with composer require rahul900day/laravel-console-spinner. Laravel package auto-discovery registers the service provider, so there is no config file to publish, no migration, and no credential or environment setup. Adoption is a single Composer command plus a few lines inside existing handle() methods.
- How do I show a spinner while a long-running Artisan command runs?
- Use the package's spinner API to start an animation before the long-running work, then stop it with a success or failure message. The package wraps Symfony Console's ProgressIndicator and ANSI rendering, so you get animated output without hand-rolling escape sequences. A typical integration is two to four lines per command.
- Can I customize the spinner frames, messages, and completion states?
- Yes. The package is designed for customizable frames, messages, and completion states, so you can match your CLI's tone or show distinct success and failure output. That customization is its main differentiator over a bare progress indicator. Check the README for the exact frame and message API.
- Does laravel-console-spinner support Laravel 11 and Laravel 12?
- The package is a strong fit for Laravel 9 and 10 command suites that predate laravel/prompts. Laravel 11 and 12 ship first-party laravel/prompts, which already provides spin() and progress(), so benchmark that helper first. If you do adopt the package on newer Laravel, verify its php and illuminate/support constraints against your pinned versions.
- Should I use laravel-console-spinner or laravel/prompts spin()?
- laravel/prompts is framework-maintained and covers spin() and progress(), which makes it the default choice on Laravel 11 and newer. rahul900day/laravel-console-spinner is a thin wrapper over Symfony Console's ProgressIndicator that adds ergonomic spinner output and customization. Choose it when you need its frame or message customization on an older Laravel codebase, not as a default dependency.
- Will the spinner break piped output, CI runs, or non-interactive terminals?
- This is a decision point to verify before rollout. ANSI animation must not contaminate piped, JSON, or machine-consumed output, so guard spinner usage with Terminal::isInteractive() or an explicit --no-interaction check. Also confirm whether the package writes to stdout or stderr, and exclude commands with --format= or JSON output from any spinner rollout.
- How do I prevent a hidden cursor or half-drawn line when my command throws an exception?
- Wrap spinner usage in try/finally so the spinner is always stopped, even when the underlying task throws. That prevents a hidden cursor or half-drawn line from being left in a shared terminal. Confirm in your proof of concept that the package restores cursor state on exceptions rather than relying only on normal completion.
- Does laravel-console-spinner respect --quiet and -vvv verbosity levels?
- Verify this in your proof of concept, because animated output should be suppressed under --quiet and ideally reduced or disabled at higher verbosity. A safe pattern is to start the spinner only when output is interactive and quiet mode is off. Do not assume the package handles every verbosity level for you.
- Is laravel-console-spinner safe to use in production and actively maintained?
- Functional risk is low because the blast radius is a cosmetic CLI defect; nothing downstream reads the output. Strategic risk is moderate to high: it is a 76-star, single-maintainer package with a bus factor of one, although the March 2025 release shows the maintainer is active. Confirm test coverage and the declared PHP and Symfony Console constraints before committing.
- How do I keep the dependency easy to remove if I later switch to laravel/prompts?
- Adopt it per-command rather than globally, and route calls through a small internal trait or helper such as App\Console\Concerns\SpinsOutput. Call sites then depend on your abstraction, not on the RahulDey12 namespace, so swapping to laravel/prompts or a hand-rolled ProgressIndicator is a one-file change. Explicitly exclude commands that emit parseable output from the rollout.