Install Foundation

Foundation requires PHP 8.3 or newer. Projects should generally install the split packages they use, with runtime components in require and developer tooling in require-dev.

Install runtime components

Install the packages the application uses in production:

composer require \
  stellarwp/foundation-container \
  stellarwp/foundation-log \
  stellarwp/foundation-lock

Add other components as the application needs them rather than installing integrations speculatively.

Install developer tooling separately

The CLI package generates project code. Install it for development and exclude it from production WordPress plugin ZIPs:

composer require --dev stellarwp/foundation-cli

Installing CLI also installs Database, Migrations, and WP-CLI integration for its generators. Their availability in your development environment does not make them production dependencies. If your application uses a package installed only through the development CLI, composer install --no-dev excludes it and the application can fail with missing classes.

Explicitly require the runtime packages your application uses, even when Composer has already installed them through CLI. For example, a project shipping migrations needs:

composer require stellarwp/foundation-migrations

Composer keeps one shared installation and retains that package for production. Installing CLI before or after the runtime package makes no difference.

Build production archives from a clean staging directory with development dependencies excluded:

composer install --no-dev --classmap-authoritative

Check the resulting plugin ZIP contains neither the stellarwp/foundation-cli package nor its vendor/bin/foundation binary. Shared dependencies remain when required by runtime packages. Shipped WP-CLI commands are operational functionality: require stellarwp/foundation-wpcli normally when your plugin uses them.

Deliberately choose the aggregate package

The aggregate includes CLI in production, even with --no-dev. Use split packages for distributable plugin ZIPs.

For an environment that intentionally keeps every component and developer tooling, install the aggregate:

composer require stellarwp/foundation

This provides every runtime component and the developer CLI at vendor/bin/foundation. It is convenient for a complete application or development environment, but it is not the lean installation path for a distributable WordPress plugin.

Load Composer before Foundation

Load Composer’s generated autoloader from the application entrypoint before constructing the container or registering providers:

<?php declare(strict_types=1);

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

WordPress projects may use a build tool such as Strauss to prefix production dependencies. That packaging step does not change which Foundation packages belong in require or require-dev.