Contributor install | Archived 2.3 Magento Developer Guide

If you are a code or documentation contributor, this install guide is for you! Use Composer to install Magento, then switch over to a released version and update any installation dependencies.

Are you a non-contributor? Check out our Quick start install guide. Do you have more advanced install problems to solve? Check out our Advanced install guide.

Intended audience

The audience for this topic is anyone who contributes to the Magento Open Source codebase. You should be highly technical, understand Composer and Git commands, and be able to upgrade the Magento system software and extensions using those commands. If that isn’t you, go back and choose another starting point.

If you clone the Magento 2 GitHub repository, you cannot use the Magento software in a production environment. You cannot have a live store that accepts orders and so on.

Prerequisites

Before you continue, make sure you’ve done all of the following:

Set up a server that meets our system requirements
Created the file system owner

We use Composer to manage Magento components and their dependencies. Using Composer to get the Magento software metapackage provides the following advantages:

Reuse third-party libraries without bundling them with source code
Reduce extension conflicts and compatibility issues by using a component-based architecture with robust dependency management
Adhere to PHP-Framework Interoperability Group (FIG) standards
Repackage Magento Open Source with other components
Use the Magento software in a production environment

You can also download an archive file for a specific version of Magento in either ZIP or TAR format. Installing Magento from an archive lacks the advantages of using Composer. Contributing developers should use the git-based installation method.