Lean Package Validator Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Lean Package Strategy: Enables adoption of a "lean" package philosophy by excluding non-essential files (e.g., tests, dev tools) from release artifacts, reducing package size and improving performance.
• CI/CD Integration: Facilitates automated validation of .gitattributes in pipelines, ensuring compliance with lean package standards before releases.
• Build vs. Buy: Justifies buying this package over custom scripts for .gitattributes management, given its presets, extensibility, and integration with Composer/GitHub Actions.
• Developer Experience: Improves DX by standardizing .gitattributes formatting (e.g., sorting, alignment) and providing CLI tools for creation/updates.
• Multi-Language Support: Expands use cases beyond PHP (e.g., Python, JavaScript) via custom glob patterns, aligning with roadmap goals for cross-language tooling.
• Security/Compliance: Mitigates risks of accidentally bundling sensitive files (e.g., .env, composer.lock) in releases by enforcing strict validation.

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:

  • Your team prioritizes small, optimized package distributions (e.g., micro-services, libraries).
  • You need automated validation of .gitattributes in CI/CD (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
  • Your project uses Composer and follows PHP/Packagist standards (or supports other languages via custom presets).
  • You want to standardize .gitattributes across repositories (e.g., monorepos, open-source projects).
  • You’re releasing PHARs, Docker images, or npm packages where bloat impacts performance.

• Look elsewhere if:

  • Your project doesn’t use Git or .gitattributes (e.g., SVN, Mercurial).
  • You need fine-grained file-level permissions (use git update-index or custom scripts).
  • Your team lacks Composer/PHP ecosystem familiarity (though presets support other languages).
  • You require real-time validation (e.g., IDE plugins) instead of CLI/GitHub Actions.
  • Your packages are already minimal (e.g., single-file scripts) and don’t need .gitattributes.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package automates the enforcement of ‘lean’ package standards—reducing release artifact sizes by excluding dev files (tests, configs) from distributions. It integrates seamlessly with Composer and CI/CD, cutting release times and storage costs. For example, a PHP library could shrink its release size by 30% overnight, improving deployment speed and reducing cloud storage bills. It’s a low-code solution to a high-impact problem, with minimal maintenance overhead."

For Engineers: *"The Lean Package Validator (LPV) is a CLI tool that:

1. Validates .gitattributes to ensure only essential files (e.g., src/, composer.json) are included in releases.
2. Auto-generates or reformats .gitattributes with presets for PHP, Python, JS, etc.
3. Integrates with Composer scripts (e.g., composer validate-gitattributes) and GitHub Actions for zero-effort compliance.
4. Supports custom glob patterns for non-PHP projects. Use case: Add it to your composer.json scripts to block bloated releases. Example:*

composer require --dev stolt/lean-package-validator
# Then run:
composer validate-gitattributes

It’s like prettier for .gitattributes—consistent, enforceable, and dev-friendly."