[moojd]

I don't think composer has a diff option to dump the actual code differences before you update yet but yes most of this list comes from my past experience with composer. My current company doesn't use PHP but I look back fondly at how easy it was to audit my dependencies manually and be explicit about upgrades and transitive dependencies.

[clon]

It does offer a diff option when you have local edits in the /vendor (for whatever insane reason). Always assumed it could be triggered manually as well. TIL.

I also love how easy it is to declare conflicts [1]. Some sub sub sub dependency down the tree had a bad 0.0.1 release? Just declare a conflict and have the tool do the work.

[1] https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md#conflict