Composer tip: testing a different branch with a branch alias

Suppose you want to do a code review of a very cool Integrated feature and like to test it. Or you want to use a branch that has not yet been merged to a version branch. These branches are not tagged with a version. Normally you would use:

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"require": {
    "integrated/content-bundle": "dev-INTEGRATED-36-cool-feature"
},

But if you are doing a composer update, version dependency problems may occur. This happens because some bundles require specific/minimun versions of the content-bundle. A branch does not have a version.

To resolve this, fill in the version number at the require statement:

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"require": {
    "integrated/content-bundle": "dev-INTEGRATED-36-cool-feature as 0.9.x-dev"
},

Further, you need to make sure that 'minimum-stability' is set to 'dev'. It is also recommended to set 'prefer-stable' to 'true', otherwise you obtain all dev versions of all bundles.