Class Explorer Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Feature discovery and extensibility: The new getClassMap method lets product/engineering teams retrieve the classes and associated files discovered by the package. This supports roadmap work around plugin/module auto-registration, extension registries, and convention-based discovery in Laravel applications.
• Developer tooling and internal platforms: Teams can use the class map for code generation, documentation, dependency mapping, architecture visualization, and test fixture discovery without writing custom filesystem/class-scanning logic.
• Build vs. buy: If the product needs reusable class/file discovery with caching, this package can reduce custom infrastructure work. The v1.1.0 addition makes it more viable for tooling and introspection use cases beyond simple scanning.
• Upgrade priority: The cache key fix for the recursive parameter is a correctness fix. If we rely on cached discovery results while toggling recursive scanning, upgrading is advisable to avoid stale or incorrect class maps.
• Lower risk than a breaking release: v1.1.0 adds a method and fixes caching behavior; no breaking changes are indicated. This is a low-friction upgrade for existing adopters and a reasonable point to evaluate adoption.

When to Consider This Package

• Consider it when the application or internal tooling needs to discover PHP classes and map them to files, especially in Laravel packages, modular monoliths, plugin systems, or convention-driven registration flows.
• Consider it when we want cached class discovery and need reliable behavior across recursive and non-recursive scans. The v1.1.0 cache fix directly addresses that concern.
• Consider it for developer experience tooling: generating class inventories, powering admin/debug panels, building module manifests, or supporting code-generation workflows.
• Look elsewhere if the need is full static analysis, AST-based inspection, Composer-native classmap replacement, or very large monorepo performance tuning beyond simple discovery.
• Avoid adding it as a core runtime dependency unless class/file discovery is a real product requirement; otherwise it is better scoped to tooling, package infrastructure, or developer-facing features.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

Executive summary: This Laravel/PHP package provides class and file discovery with caching. Release v1.1.0 adds a getClassMap method for retrieving discovered classes and their files, and fixes a cache-key bug related to the recursive parameter. There are no indicated breaking changes. For product and engineering, this is a low-risk upgrade that improves introspection and correctness. It is most valuable when we need reusable class discovery for plugin systems, module registration, code generation, or internal developer tooling. It is not a broad static-analysis platform, so adopt it where class-to-file mapping is the concrete need.