Cleanup

Cleaning composer vendor directory

A zero-dependency CLI script that strips development junk from your vendor directory: tests, documentation, CI configs, dotfiles, editor settings and other files that packages ship but your application never loads at runtime.

Useful when deploy size matters: shared hosting with inode/disk quotas, Docker images, serverless bundles, or just keeping backups smaller. Depending on the dependencies, it typically shaves off 10–30% of vendor size and thousands of files.

How it works

The script walks the vendor tree and deletes files and directories matching the built-in pattern list (see below). Matching is case-insensitive, so tests, Tests and TESTS are all caught.

Safety measures:

• Symlinks are never followed. A symlinked package (e.g. a composer path repository) is left untouched, and symlinks inside deleted directories are removed as links only — the target survives.
• Refuses to run outside vendor. The script checks that it is installed next to vendor/autoload.php and exits otherwise, so an accidental run from a repo checkout cannot sweep your home directory.
• Dry mode. Run with --dry first to preview what would be deleted.

Note: cleaning vendor is meant for the final deploy artifact. After cleanup, things like composer dump-autoload, package tests or docs are gone — reinstall with composer install to get them back. Some licenses formally require the license text to be distributed with the code; keep that in mind and use --exclude license if it matters for your case.

Requirements

PHP >= 8.0

Installing

composer require visavi/cleanup

Run

./vendor/bin/cleanup

Preview without deleting:

./vendor/bin/cleanup --dry

Options

Option	Short	Description
--help	-h	Display help message
--include	-i	Add patterns to the built-in list, comma separated
--exclude	-e	Remove patterns from the built-in list, comma separated
--verbose	-v	Print every deleted file instead of progress dots
--path	-p	Clean only a specific path inside vendor
--dry	-d	List what would be deleted without removing anything

Examples

Clean only symfony packages, also delete archives, but keep docs and tests:

./vendor/bin/cleanup -v --path symfony --include '*.zip,*.rar' --exclude doc,docs,test

Keep license files:

./vendor/bin/cleanup --exclude license

Typical deploy step:

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
./vendor/bin/cleanup

Default patterns

• .git
• .github
• .circleci
• .idea
• .vscode
• .psalm
• .temp
• test
• tests
• demo
• example
• examples
• doc
• docs
• benchmark
• benchmarks
• license
• authors*
• changelog*
• changes*
• faq*
• contributing*
• history*
• upgrading*
• upgrade*
• readme*
• makefile
• *.yml
• .*.yml
• *.yaml
• .*.yaml
• *.md
• *.rst
• *.txt
• *.dist
• *.neon
• *.cache
• phpunit.xml
• phpcs.xml
• psalm.xml
• .php_cs*
• .php-cs-fixer*
• .gitignore
• .gitattributes
• .gitmodules
• .editorconfig
• .dockerignore
• .mailmap
• .ds_store
• .phpstorm.meta.php
• dockerfile*
• docker-compose*
• composer.lock

License

The class is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license