Installing Composer on CentOS fails

Question

I get the following error:

[ErrorException] preg_replace_callback(): Compilation failed: assertion expected after (?( at offset 36

And no idea what it means.

Answer 1

I also get the same error on CentOS 5.10. You should try to install an older version. Version 1.0.0 worked for me:

    php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
    php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'e115a8dc7871f15d853148a7fbac7da27d6c0030b848d9b3dc09e2a0388afed865e6a3d6b3c0fad45c48e2b5fc1196ae') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
    php composer-setup.php -- --version=1.0.0
    php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

Answer 2

This isn't really an answer, but what I needed was only a specific library Composer installs. So i got that.

I'll be switching from CentOS to RedHat within the next few months, on new servers so that should make it easier as well.