[FIXED] Couldn't create laravel project with composer (version 2.1.4)

Issue

I'm trying to create a laravel project with composer and when I run

composer create-project laravel/laravel example-app

in the terminal, the process stops with the following error:

[RuntimeException]
php: does not exist and could not be created.

I have php 7.4 running through Wampserver and I've added it's PATH to the environment variables and when I run php -v in the terminal, everything seems fine:

PHP 7.4.0 (cli) (built: Nov 27 2019 10:14:18) ( ZTS Visual C++ 2017 x64 )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

what am I missing here? I'm using composer version 2.1.4 and running the command in administrative mode didn't make a difference neither.

screenshot of running commands on the command-line

Solution

Update to version 2.1.5 of Composer by running this command:

composer self-update

This was a bug that has since been fixed. It was attempting to create a directory called php: which is not possible on Windows systems.

Answered By - miken32