How to specify Composer install path?

It seems that you can define the vendor dir to be something else (plugins in your case):

{    "config": {        "vendor-dir": "plugins"    }}

Then, you might rename the package name to not have a level dir inside, like:

        "package": {            "name": "sfGuardPlugin",

So, your composer.json should look like this:

{    "config": {        "vendor-dir": "plugins"    },    "repositories": [        {            "type": "package",            "package": {                "name": "sfGuardPlugin",                "version": "4.0.2",                "dist": {                    "url": "http://plugins.symfony-project.org/get/sfGuardPlugin/sfGuardPlugin-4.0.2.tgz",                    "type": "tar"                }            }        }    ],    "require": {        "sfGuardPlugin": "4.0.*"    }}

Edit

Using this configuration, you will get the path (which is of course not good for symfony):

plugins/sfGuardPlugin/sfGuardPlugin-4.0.2/

I found a workaround with this composer.json:

{    "config": {        "vendor-dir": "plugins"    },    "repositories": [        {            "type": "package",            "package": {                "name": "sfGuardPlugin",                "version": "4.0.2",                "source": {                    "url": "http://svn.symfony-project.com/plugins/sfGuardPlugin/",                    "type": "svn",                    "reference": "branches/1.3/"                }            }        }    ],    "require": {        "sfGuardPlugin": "4.0.*"    }}

You can also use composer/installers, a multi-framework composer library installer with the "symfony1-plugin" package type. This is what my composer.json file looks like, in order for it to install both Symfony 1.4 (in lib/vendor) and plugins in (/plugins):

{    "config": {        "vendor-dir": "lib/vendor"    },    "repositories": {        "symfony": {            "type": "package",            "package": {                "name": "symfony/symfony1",                "version": "1.4",                "dist": {                    "url": "https://github.com/symfony/symfony1/zipball/1.4",                    "type": "zip"                }            }        },        "sfResquePlugin" : {            "type": "package",            "package": {                "name": "devpips/sfResquePlugin",                "type": "symfony1-plugin",                "version": "0.1",                "dist": {                    "url": "https://github.com/devpips/sfResquePlugin/zipball/master",                    "type": "zip"                }            }        }    },    "require": {        "composer/installers": "dev-master",        "symfony/symfony1": "1.4",        "devpips/sfResquePlugin":"0.1"    }}

See COMPOSER_VENDOR_DIR environment variable.

By setting this var you can make Composer install the dependencies into a directory other than vendor.

Can be helpful in the case you want to override this in a particular environment such as vagrant or docker where you wouldn't want this to be in a shared folder / volume.

And as J0k said, there's vendor-dir in config section of composer.json

Defaults to vendor. You can install dependencies into a different directory if you want to. $HOME and ~ will be replaced by your home directory's path in vendor-dir and all *-dir options below.