Point Composer users to package-command when wp package is missing

[swissspidy]

Problem

Since #846 moved wp-cli/package-command to require-dev, it still ships in the Phar but is absent from Composer-based installations of the bundle. Installing the bundle via Composer is an anti-pattern, but people do it — and today they hit a dead end:

Error: 'package' is not a registered wp command. See 'wp help' for available commands.

Nothing tells them the command exists, that their install method is why it is missing, or that composer require wp-cli/package-command brings it back. The suggest entry added in #846 only surfaces at install time, long before anyone types wp package.

Changes

Declares the guidance as metadata, using the extra.command-hints mechanism proposed in wp-cli/wp-cli#6386:

"extra": {
  "command-hints": {
    "package": "The 'package' command is bundled with the WP-CLI Phar, but is an optional dependency of Composer-based installations. Run `composer require wp-cli/package-command` to add it, or manage WP-CLI packages as regular Composer dependencies of your project instead."
  }
}

Metadata rather than code because this package has no autoload section — composer.json is the only channel it has.

composer.lock's content-hash is updated in the same commit, since extra feeds into it and the lock would otherwise be reported as stale.

Result

Composer users get:

Error: 'package' is not a registered wp command. See 'wp help' for available commands.
The 'package' command is bundled with the WP-CLI Phar, but is an optional dependency
of Composer-based installations. Run `composer require wp-cli/package-command` to add
it, or manage WP-CLI packages as regular Composer dependencies of your project instead.

Phar users see no change — the hint only fires when the command is genuinely unregistered, and in the Phar wp package is registered. The single package entry also covers every subcommand, since wp package install foo fails on the top-level package lookup.

Testing

A package-command-guidance job in testing.yml installs the bundle with --no-dev — the state Composer-based users end up in — and asserts wp package fails with the hint rather than a bare "not a registered wp command". Metadata that nothing reads is easy to break silently, so this guards against the entry being dropped or misnested, and against the framework renaming the extra key.

Two honest caveats:

• The job exercises the root-package read path, not the installed.json path. With --no-dev in this repo, the bundle is the root package, and the framework reads hints from the root composer.json as well as from vendor/composer/installed.json. Real users hit the latter, since for them the bundle is a dependency. Covering that path properly needs the bundle installed as a dependency of a scratch project, and wp-cli-tests currently offers no step for that — Given a dependency on current wp-cli hardcodes wp-cli/wp-cli, and {SRC_DIR} points at wp-cli-tests itself rather than the repo under test. An end-to-end Behat scenario here would need a wp-cli-tests change first. The installed.json path is worth covering directly in Add hints for commands that are not registered wp-cli#6386 instead.
• This job will be red until Add hints for commands that are not registered wp-cli#6386 lands, since the framework has no CommandHints on dev-main yet. That is the dependency showing up honestly in CI rather than being asserted only in prose.

Neither the job nor the hint text has been executed locally — the authoring environment could not complete a dependency install for this repo. The hint text itself was verified end to end against a simulated Composer project built from this composer.json, producing the output above, and composer validate passes with the regenerated lock hash.

Dependency

Requires wp-cli/wp-cli#6386 for the metadata to be read. Until that lands the metadata is inert but harmless — an unrecognized extra key that Composer ignores.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Added guidance for Composer-based installations when using the wp package command.
  • Users are directed to install the optional package command dependency when needed.

• Tests

  • Added automated verification that wp package displays the expected guidance when the optional dependency is not installed.

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• .github/workflows/testing.yml

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change adds Composer guidance for the optional package command dependency and adds a CI job that verifies the command fails with production dependencies only.

Changes

Package command guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Guidance and validation .github/workflows/testing.yml, composer.json	Composer metadata describes the optional wp-cli/package-command dependency. The CI job installs production dependencies and verifies that wp package fails with the expected Composer guidance.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Feature

Suggested reviewers: schlessera

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to bf615

The new production-only CI check exercises the missing-command guidance. No concrete current-head failure or permission exposure is established from the available configuration.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: guiding Composer users to install wp-cli/package-command when wp package is unavailable.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch claude/wp-cli-package-composer-guidance-rve6ct

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Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.

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Pull request overview

Adds Composer metadata and CI coverage to guide users when wp package is unavailable.

Changes:

• Adds command-hints guidance to composer.json.
• Updates the lockfile content hash.
• Adds a --no-dev workflow check.

File summaries

File	Summary
composer.lock	Updates the generated content hash.
composer.json	Declares guidance for the missing command.
.github/workflows/testing.yml	Verifies the guidance appears without dev dependencies.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/3 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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Inline comments:
In @.github/workflows/testing.yml:
- Line 17: Update the package-command-guidance job to declare explicit read-only
permissions, setting its GitHub token access to contents: read and preventing
inherited repository-level write permissions.

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⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

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📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• .github/workflows/testing.yml
• composer.json

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