Today composer is the recommended approach to install (o more precisely to download) Drupal 8. This is true for the core but also for contributed modules and themes.
So now, to start a new Drupal 8 project, we need to download it via composer and not as we did before with drush or drupal console. Of course, we'll still use drush or drupal console to install contrib modules or themes, but not for downloading them.
The main benefit of using composer is that it allows us to systematically manage a sprawling list of dependencies (and their subsidiary dependencies) and ensure that the right versions for each package are used or updated.
An official project composer template has been created for installing Drupal with composer. We will create our project directly using this template, which is also available on Packagist.
So now, to start a new Drupal 8 project, we need to download it via composer and not as we did before with drush or drupal console. Of course, we'll still use drush or drupal console to install contrib modules or themes, but not for downloading them.
The main benefit of using composer is that it allows us to systematically manage a sprawling list of dependencies (and their subsidiary dependencies) and ensure that the right versions for each package are used or updated.
An official project composer template has been created for installing Drupal with composer. We will create our project directly using this template, which is also available on Packagist.