Composer install using Homestead gives error "Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages"

Question

I am trying to install my composer packages using the following command:

composer install --no-dev --no-scripts

The composer.json file looks like this (it's very similar to the standard Laravel composer file):

{
    "name": "laravel/laravel",
    "description": "The Laravel Framework.",
    "keywords": ["framework", "laravel"],
    "license": "MIT",
    "type": "project",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.5.9",
        "laravel/framework": "5.2.*",
        "doctrine/dbal": "^2.5",
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "fzaninotto/faker": "~1.4",
        "mockery/mockery": "0.9.*",
        "phpunit/phpunit": "~4.0",
        "symfony/css-selector": "2.8.*|3.0.*",
        "symfony/dom-crawler": "2.8.*|3.0.*",
        "laravel/homestead": "^5.2",
        "barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper": "^2.3"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "classmap": [
            "database"
        ],
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
    "autoload-dev": {
        "classmap": [
            "tests/TestCase.php"
        ]
    },
    "scripts": {
        "post-root-package-install": [
            "php -r \"copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
        ],
        "post-create-project-cmd": [
            "php artisan key:generate"
        ],
        "post-install-cmd": [
            "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postInstall",
            "php artisan optimize"
        ],
        "post-update-cmd": [
            "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postUpdate",
            "php artisan optimize"
        ]
    },
    "config": {
        "preferred-install": "dist"
    }
}

However when I try to install it on my production machine (which runs PHP on version v5.5.9 I get the following error:

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

  Problem 1
    - laravel/homestead v5.4.0 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.3.2 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.3.1 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.3.0 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.2.4 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.2.1 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead v5.2.0 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead 5.2.3 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - laravel/homestead 5.2.2 requires php ^5.6 || ^7.0 -> your PHP version (5.5.9) does not satisfy that requirement.
    - Installation request for laravel/homestead ^5.2 -> satisfiable by laravel/homestead[5.2.2, 5.2.3, v5.2.0, v5.2.1, v5.2.4, v5.3.0, v5.3.1, v5.3.2, v5.4.0].

So my questions is as follows:

• Why is homestead even being installed when I said --no-dev and homestead is a dev package?
• If I did want to install Homestead on my production machine, how can I solve the above problem?

Answer 1

--no-dev should not install the dev dependencies. Check your production build scripts (or whatever you are using to run this on production), that --no-dev is indeed added.

For the second part of your question, you can avoid the error by changing laravel/homestead package version to ~4.0 or 4.0.5 to be more precise to make it compatible with your php version.