Required package in composer.json not found

I have created using the workbench of Laravel a package and uploded it to Packagist under pica/pica-base. The package contains the following require statement:

"require": { "php": ">=5.4.0", "illuminate/support": "4.2.*", "gregwar/captcha": "dev-master" },

When I try to install my pica/pica-base package it fails stating the following error message:

Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.

Problem 1 - pica/pica-base dev-master requires gregwar/captcha dev-master -> no matching package found. - pica/pica-base dev-master requires gregwar/captcha dev-master -> no matching package found. - Installation request for pica/pica-base dev-master -> satisfiable by pica/pica-base[dev-master].

On advice of the FAQ I also tried the procedure with 'dev'in staed of 'dev-master'with the gregwar/captcha package but with the same result.

I don't understand this because with the exact same requirement I can install the gregwar-package in any other project. And the link to the package shows up in the page of my package on Packigist (https://packagist.org/packages/pica/pica-base).

So why does this fail?

Thanks for efforts!

Solution

By default, Composer uses only stable packages when calculating your dependencies. There are two ways to override this if you want to use an unstable (dev-master) package:

In your root composer.json, require a dev-master version of a package (this is why you have no problem getting the pica/pica-base package, as it is in your root composer.json)
In your root composer.json, set the minimum-stability flag to dev:
```
"require": {
    ...
},
"minimum-stability": "dev"
```

So you can basically do one of the following things:

Add the gregwar/captcha dependency in your root composer.json (the one of your Laravel project)
Add "minimum-stability": "dev" to your root composer.json.

I recommend going for the second option. If you do so, you might want to also add the prefer-stable flag, in order to make sure that not all packages are downloaded in unstable versions:

"require": {
    ...
    "pica/pica-base": "dev-master"
},
"minimum-stability": "dev",
"prefer-stable": true