Applying Custom Patches to Composer Packages Using a Post‑Autoload‑Dump Script

During development, you may encounter bugs or missing features in a Composer package and cannot rely on the package maintainer to provide a quick fix.

Although tools like cweagans/composer-patches exist, they can be cumbersome to use.

A straightforward solution is to copy the files you need to modify into a local patches directory and let Composer overwrite the original files after each install or update.

Steps:

1. Navigate to the vendor/ directory of the target package and edit the source code there, making sure not to run any composer install or composer update commands while editing.

2. In your project root, create a patches folder that mirrors the file structure of the package, and copy the modified files into this folder.

3. Add the following script to the scripts->post-autoload-dump section of your composer.json:

"@php -r \"passthru(sprintf(PHP_OS==='WINNT'?'xcopy %s /D /E /C /R /H /I /K /Y':'cp -rfv %s', 'patches/* vendor/'));\""

After these changes, Composer will automatically apply your patches whenever it runs the post‑autoload‑dump hook, effectively customizing the package without external patch tools.