Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) How to stop worrying about modified 3-party modules in app/code?

You’re a Magento developer and you’re tasked with updating an extension that’s placed in the app/code folder. “Easy-peasy,” you think.

But to be sure, you review the commits in the repository and see hundreds of them—hundreds of direct changes to a stale version! It's not so easy now, is it? Sound familiar?

If a third-party vendor supports a module but it isn’t available directly through Composer, you can still find a way to install it via Composer. And now, I’ll show you how.

Example: Installing the auctane/api (ShipStation) Extension

Let’s imagine we need to install the auctane/api extension. Here are the steps we can follow:

1. Create a ZIP file (e.g. auctane-api.zip) with the extension you need to install.

2. Place it here: lib/composer/artifacts/shipstation/

3. Execute the following commands:

Do not forget to add the zip to the repository!

Enjoy your clean app/code folder and less headache in the future.