Part 1 — Installation

Why this step exists: before you can describe a domain, you need a PHP project and the AUSUS packages on disk. AUSUS is distributed as ordinary Composer packages — there is no installer, no global CLI, and no framework to bootstrap.

Check your tools

Run these and confirm the versions match the prerequisites:

php --version
php -m | grep -E 'pdo|sqlite'
composer --version

You should see PHP 8.3 or newer and both pdo and pdo_sqlite in the module list. pdo_sqlite is what AUSUS uses to store data in this tutorial.

Create the project

Make a fresh directory and move into it:

mkdir ticket-system
cd ticket-system

Add the composer.json

Create a composer.json in the project root. This declares one AUSUS dependency and sets up autoloading for the code you are about to write:

{
    "name": "tutorial/ticket-system",
    "description": "AUSUS tutorial — a minimal ticket system.",
    "type": "project",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=8.3",
        "ausus/standard-stack": "0.1.*"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Helpdesk\\": "src/"
        }
    },
    "minimum-stability": "stable"
}

Two things to note, and why:

• ausus/standard-stack is a single package that pulls in everything you need: the kernel, the runtime, the SQLite persistence driver, the HTTP API, and the high-level Ausus\Application class. Installing one package keeps the dependency list honest.
• The Helpdesk\ → src/ autoload rule means any class you put in src/ under the Helpdesk namespace will be found automatically. Your domain plugin will live there.

Install

composer install

Composer downloads ausus/standard-stack and its dependencies into vendor/ and writes a vendor/autoload.php. Every script in this tutorial starts by requiring that file.

Verify the install

Create a throwaway file check.php in the project root:

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

echo class_exists(\Ausus\Application::class)
    ? "AUSUS is installed and autoloadable.\n"
    : "Something is wrong — Ausus\\Application was not found.\n";

Run it:

php check.php

Expected output:

AUSUS is installed and autoloadable.

If you see that line, the install is complete. You can delete check.php — it was only a smoke test.

What you have now

ticket-system/
├── composer.json
├── composer.lock
└── vendor/          ← AUSUS packages + autoloader

A project with AUSUS available, and nothing else. In the next part you start describing the domain.

Next: Part 2 — The domain.