What has happened to totten/lurkerlite?

Question

Problem 1
Installing CiviCRM using Composer has started giving these errors:

    - Root composer.json requires civicrm/composer-compile-plugin ^0.14.0 -> satisfiable by civicrm/composer-compile-plugin[v0.14].
    - civicrm/composer-compile-plugin v0.14 requires totten/lurkerlite ^1.3 -> could not be found in any version, there may be a typo in the package name.

Problem 2

    - civicrm/composer-compile-plugin v0.14 requires totten/lurkerlite ^1.3 -> could not be found in any version, there may be a typo in the package name.
    - civicrm/civicrm-core 5.31.1 requires civicrm/composer-compile-lib ~0.3 || ~1.0 -> satisfiable by civicrm/composer-compile-lib[v0.3, v0.4].
    - civicrm/composer-compile-lib[v0.3, ..., v0.4] require civicrm/composer-compile-plugin ~0.9 || ~1.0 -> satisfiable by civicrm/composer-compile-plugin[v0.14].

Does anyone know what has gone wrong?

Answer 1

- civicrm/composer-compile-plugin v0.14 requires totten/lurkerlite ^1.3
   -> could not be found in any version, there may be a typo in the package name.

The error message suggests a typo, which I think is misleading/incorrect. Let me give some counter-indicators -- and then some alternative theories.

The name and version should be correct because:

• (A1) In the official directory of composer packages (packagist.org), it lists totten/lurkerlite with version 1.3.0 as available. See: https://packagist.org/packages/totten/lurkerlite

• (A2) If I create a new project with a minimalist composer.json, then it does manage to install totten/lurkerlite.

  mkdir /tmp/abcd
  cd /tmp/abcd
  echo '{}' > composer.json
  composer config minimum-stability dev
  composer require civicrm/civicrm-{core,packages}:5.31.1
  ls vendor/totten/lurkerlite/
  

You may want to try a new/empty project like this yourself. If the new/empty project works, then that points to an issue in the local composer.{json,lock} (like B1/B2/B4). If the new/empty project also fails, then that points to an issue in the upstream or tooling (like B3/B4).

Some alternative theories:

• (B1) composer.lock may become overly opinionated. Try clearing it even more aggressively:

  mkdir /tmp/old-stuff
  mv composer.lock vendor /tmp/old-stuff
  composer install
  

• (B2) composer.json may become overly opinionated or have old/redundant constraints. Double-check the current list of recommended packages and then read your local composer.json. See if there are any extra/redundant constraints.

• (B3) composer has a local cache (e.g. ~/.cache/composer/). This cache could be corrupted/stale (e.g. if there was a network-error or disk-error at the wrong moment). Try clearing it out.

• (B4) composer can be configured with alternative repositories/feeds. If the configuration disables or supercedes packagist.org, then it might not get a consistent feed. (Most people don't disable packagist -- if you do this, then you should know about it.)