commie2 VS tombs

I agree with this. I built an open source package that should work for you in this situation with no version control in it. https://github.com/n0nag0n/commie2 Get this installed internally and then start doing some "lightweight" code reviews. Your other team members can get emails about any comments you make and it'll be lightweight collaboration.

As others have said, you're in a precarious position: working with pure tech debt for a business that clearly has no interest in keeping its addressing tech debt.

That being said, first thing would be to use source control and get done sort of code review/release process in place.

Contrary to other suggestions of "then write tests for everything", I think that's bad advice. It's far more likely that you'll pigeonhole yourself and your team on complicated and unhelpful tests. 3 things you could do in a short amount of time to radically increase the code quality:

- Lint all the code (php-cs-fixer is a good tool, rector can also help)

- At least start dependency management (with composer), even if it's empty.

- Introduce static analysis into the code review process (phpstan/psalm, in a CI preferably). Baseline suppression of existing errors are easy to generate.

Then personally I would try and aggressively purge dead code, which is easier said than done. Tombs (https://github.com/krakjoe/tombs) is a little awkward but can be helpful, especially if all there is is production.

Again, handling tech debt sounds like it will be nigh impossible at this company, but modern PHP is really enjoyable and I hope you're able to experience it.

How is this different from https://github.com/krakjoe/tombs?

I don't use this myself, as dead code isn't such a problem for me, but: https://github.com/krakjoe/tombs