Composer vs. Drush Make, A Burning Dilemma?

All around Good Guy Greg Anderson wrote up a very thorough post weighing the pros and cons of Drush Make versus Composer.

Why compare these two tools when both are perfectly fine for Drupal development? Well, this bold tweet from Drupal developer Michael Prasuhn ignited a healthy discussion thread on Twitter: 

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: composer has a long way to go to catch up with Drush make.

— Michael Prasuhn (@mikey_p) July 25, 2015

Greg made his case in tweet format and then thought more about it and wrote up his side-by-side evaluation on Pantheon’s blog. His conclusion? Drush is good now and will still be around for a few years, but Composer is the tool of tomorrow.  

You can read more of the details at his original post, and if you have time, I recommend you do so. But the gist of it is that getting familiar with Composer now will serve Drupalists in the long run as it becomes an increasingly standard tool in the broader php community. 

Here’s what Greg has to say about the rise of Composer: 

Composer is a mature and standard tool in the broader php community, though, and the Drupal community would be well served by adopting it as well over time. Composer has achieved feature parity with Drush Make, and is more modern, more standard, and more convenient. Projects that are under active development using object-oriented code or external php libraries would be well served by a switch to composer today.

How do we feel about Composer here at Promet? Full disclosure: we’re pretty big fans. Guilty as charged, but with Drupal 8 around the corner we’ve adopted the view that more modern features and increased adoption are both good things. 

Onward!

Watch our co-presentation with Greg from Drupalcon Los Angeles: