"composer update nothing" is not documented about getcomposer.org

[Seldaek]

And just to expand a bit, composer update ldskjldsjfsds does the same as composer update nothing, but we're not going to document that either :)

[stof]

composer update nothing was just a hack before --lock was available actually. It is not a special composer feature allowing to update only the lock file. It is a partial update whitelisting only the nothing package (which is very unlikely to match any real package given the naming convention for packages).
So there is no reason to document it. It is just a smart way of using a documented feature (the partial update) to achieve something which was not yet a first-class citizen in composer at this time.
And there is also nothing to deprecate in Composer, as nothing was ever added in composer to support it.

Btw, as Composer is now smart when checking for outdated lock files (thanks to the content-hash introduced mid-2015), you probably don't need to perform lock-only updates now.

[alcohol]

composer update nothing is the same as composer update --lock

[ravage84]

I know, but nonethless it should be documented, IMO.

[alcohol]

composer update --lock is documented.

composer update nothing, while it works, is a novelty/legacy relic, and does not warrant documenting in my opinion.

[ravage84]

Good, let's tell the people not to use it by adding a short note to the composer update cli docs. 😼

Or even offiicially deprecate it in composer itself.

[Seldaek]

Yeah.. basically see my comment on lorna's post.