Many times while creating an application in a local environment, you might have the need to create packages or plugins you either do not want to share or that is simply not ready for primetime. Other times you might also want to simply test a package that you have cloned locally.

If you are using Composer as your package manager (you better be), you are in luck. The normal process is to use composer packages published in websites like packagist.org. However, using local packages is equally as easy. 

Let's take an example of the following package:

akkaweb/akka-example

which has been uploaded to our local dev server and is located at:

/var/www/akka-example/
/var/www/akka-example/src
etc...

To have this package included in your application you must add the following to your applications `composer.json` files

"require" : {
    "akkaweb/akka-example" : "dev-master"
},
"repositories" : [
    {
        "type" : "vcs",
        "url" : "/var/www/akka-example/"
    }
]

Then you can run:

php composer.phar update

// globaly
composer update

You are good to go. Your package should now be included within your application and by simply running the commands above you would get your recent changes to your package appear and be tested within your application.