Civix is a command-line tool for building CiviCRM extensions.

Requirements

• PHP 5.3+
• CiviCRM 4.2+ (installed from SVN with r42790+ -- http://svn.civicrm.org/civicrm)
• Composer (http://getcomposer.org)
• git

Installation

cd $HOME

# If you haven't already, install the PHP tool "composer"
curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php

# Download civix and dependencies
git clone git://github.com/totten/civix.git
cd civix
php $HOME/composer.phar install

# Add civix to the PATH
export PATH=$HOME/civix:$PATH

# Link civix with a developmental CiviCRM site/source-tree.
# This requires knowing the directory which contains civicrm.settings.php
# For example:
civix config:set civicrm_api3_conf_path /var/www/drupal/sites/default/

Upgrade

To upgrade civix and its dependencies, one can normally do:

cd $HOME/civix
git pull
php $HOME/composer.phar install

On some occasions, changes in civix, in a dependency, or in composer can break the upgrade. If this happens, then try deleting the dependencies and re-installing them:

php $HOME/composer.phar self-update
cd $HOME/civix
git pull
rm -rf vendor
php $HOME/composer.phar install

Documentation

The CiviCRM wiki includes tutorials for building extensions. See:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC42/Create+an+Extension

For reference documentation, civix supports a "--help" option. For example, to get reference materials about the "generate:page" command, run:

civix generate:page --help