Patching WordPress with Composer

Sometimes you need to patch WordPress core — to fix a bug before an official release, suppress noisy deprecation notices, or backport a change from an open pull request. Composer patches let you apply these changes in a maintainable way that persists across installs and deploys.

Installing the patches plugin #

Add the cweagans/composer-patches package to your project:

$ composer require cweagans/composer-patches

Enable the plugin in your composer.json:

"config": {
  "allow-plugins": {
    "cweagans/composer-patches": true
  }
}

Which package to patch #

Bedrock's roots/wordpress is a metapackage — it doesn't contain any files. The actual WordPress core files are in the roots/wordpress-no-content package, which is installed to your wordpress-install-dir (typically web/wp).

Patches must target roots/wordpress-no-content, and patch file paths should be relative to the package root (e.g., wp-includes/load.php, not web/wp/wp-includes/load.php).

Creating a patch file #

Create a patches/ directory in your project root. Patches are standard unified diff files with paths relative to the WordPress root.

Example: suppressing deprecated notices #

--- a/wp-includes/load.php
+++ b/wp-includes/load.php
@@ -607,7 +607,7 @@ function wp_debug_mode() {
 	}

 	if ( WP_DEBUG ) {
-		error_reporting( E_ALL );
+		error_reporting( E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED );

 		if ( WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY ) {
 			ini_set( 'display_errors', 1 );

Save this as patches/wordpress.patch.

Configuring patches in composer.json

Add your patches to the extra.patches section of composer.json:

"extra": {
  "patches": {
    "roots/wordpress-no-content": [
      {
        "description": "Suppress E_DEPRECATED notices",
        "url": "patches/wordpress.patch"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Applying patches #

Patches are automatically applied when you install or update dependencies:

$ composer install

You'll see output confirming patches are being applied:

  - Patching roots/wordpress-no-content
      - Applying patch patches/wordpress.patch (Suppress E_DEPRECATED notices)

To force patches to reapply, reinstall the package:

$ composer reinstall roots/wordpress-no-content

Maintaining patches across updates #

When WordPress is updated, patches are reapplied automatically. If a patch fails to apply (usually because the patched code changed in the new version), Composer will show an error. You'll need to:

1. Review the WordPress changes
2. Update or remove the patch as needed
3. Test that your fix is still necessary — the issue may have been resolved upstream