You need to keep any default dependencies in your composer.json as well as the ones you added..

If you did, composer is likely not deleting the extras, but rather deleting old versions so it can install new versions.

If neither of those seem to be the case, can you share more specific information about your composer.json and which dependencies are staying/going?

For some reason I did not have a composer.json, and must have missed something during installation. I managed to grab another composer.json file from another Laravel project I have (is this acceptable?).

Is there any way I could create a composer.json file based on what dependencies are already installed?

Thanks for the reply.