Well, it's not needed - that's my point. Bundler just uses the one well-established format for packaging libraries and declaring dependencies. Even git repositories and local code uses the same depency-declaring format: A standard gemspec. Otherwise bundler just stays out of the way to do it's main job - dependency resolution. There is no such thing as two package formats in the ruby world. There is now in the PHP world - PEAR and Composer (and zip and tarfiles). PEAR has always been severely lacking - no way to install two versions of the same PEAR package, improper dependency-tracking - so I guess that's required. It's probably a huge step forward, but it's still not "better" to be able to track two package formats "with just a little extra configuration" instead of "it works just fine without extra work with the default package format." And that's exactly what the article claims: "Yes, PHP has a better dependency manager than any other languages.

I didn't mean to say it is better than all other dependency managers and basically didn't want to argue at all. My point is just that I am happy that Composer is around now, as it lets me include all dependencies from various sources in a convenient and reliable way. So no matter which dependency manager for which language is 'the best', Composer definitely means better times for all PHP developers.

Seems that Ruby had one good standard solution with gems for a long time, let's hope that Composer has a similar bright future. From my perspective, it's already the standard and including a composer.json file is a 'best practice' for all 'well-connected' PHP developers releasing a library these days.