Upgrade Composer – SHA384 is not supported by your openssl extension, could not verify the phar file integrity

Ideally, the PHP package manager Composer can update itself with the command

composer self-update

Unfortunately, when I ran this command I got

[RuntimeException]
SHA384 is not supported by your openssl extension, could not verify the phar file integrity

This is a known issue (see Composer Issue 7669) but unfortunately the thread does not offer a clear solution.

How I Upgraded Composer

I’m on a Mac running macOS Mojave (10.14), here is how I worked around this RuntimeException and upgraded my version of Composer.

Find Composer’s Location

To find the location of your current (out-dated) version of Composer, run

type composer

composer is hashed (/usr/local/bin/composer)

Take note of the composer location (in my case /usr/local/bin/composer), this will be important in a moment.

Run the Initial Composer Install

From the command line, run the Composer install command (as documented at Download Composer).

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'a5c698ffe4b8e849a443b120cd5ba38043260d5c4023dbf93e1558871f1f07f58274fc6f4c93bcfd858c6bd0775cd8d1') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

This displayed the message

Composer (version 1.9.0) successfully installed to: /Users/sal/composer.phar
Use it: php composer.phar

Make note of the new installation path (in my case /Users/sal/composer.phar), this will also be important in a moment.

Move the New Version to the Correct Location

From the command line you’re going to move (mv) the new installation path (in my case /Users/sal/composer.phar) to the composer location (in my case /usr/local/bin/composer). Here is the command I ran

mv /Users/sal/composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the Change Occurred

By running

composer --version

you should now see the latest version of the Composer.

Thanks

This post originally came about during my Five for the Future (5ftf) work at WebDevstudios. Thank you, WebDevStudios.

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a senior backend engineer.