A Composer plugin which maintains a simple YAML file listing all installed packages with their version numbers.

When Composer performs an install or an update, the output tells you what has been changed. But once that output is gone, it's hard to reconstitute it, as a diff of the changes to the composer.lock file is hard to read.

This plugin writes a YAML file listing each package on one line, so a diff or log can show you exactly what has been changed.

Install the plugin.

composer require joachim-n/composer-manifest

Whenever packages are installed, updated, or removed, the plugin will update the composer-manifest.yaml file in your project root. You should commit this to version control at the same time as you commit changes to composer.json and composer.lock to keep a history of changes.

With Renovate, use the fileFilters config option to ensure the manifest file is committed by the renovate bot.