Why updating of dependencies in composer is so slow?

Question

I am using composer (http://getcomposer.org/) to manage installed bundles in the Symfony2 (symfony v 2.1.3). Version of the composer is de3188c.

Answer 1

I have found that it is also very slow, in the tens of minutes slow.

For me I added -vvv and found it was hanging at stuff like Downloading https://packagist.org/p/provider-active$53cdf887c8d2925b3501f47d6980fb7bda2310716369bf7a84857c6e62bbab0f.json

I then went to the browser and tried to download that JSON file and sure enough. It was packagist.org to be the cause of the slowness.