FuelPHP Forums

Well, you should, but I won't know how, not a Composer expert I'm afraid.

To test, I copied the composer.json from 1.8-master, and changed it to explicitly install 1.8.0:

[wanwizard@catwoman] $ composer install
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Package operations: 9 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
  - Installing composer/installers (v1.7.0): Loading from cache
  - Installing fuel/core (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuel/auth (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuel/email (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuel/oil (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuel/orm (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuel/parser (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
  - Installing fuelphp/upload (2.0.6): Loading from cache
  - Installing fuel/docs (1.8.0): Downloading (100%)        
Writing lock file
Generating autoload files

Then I changed it back to 1.8.* and ran an update:

[wanwizard@catwoman] $ composer update
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Package operations: 6 installs, 7 updates, 0 removals
  - Installing michelf/php-markdown (1.7.0): Loading from cache
  - Installing psr/log (1.1.2): Loading from cache
  - Installing monolog/monolog (1.25.3): Loading from cache
  - Installing paragonie/random_compat (v9.99.99): Loading from cache
  - Installing paragonie/sodium_compat (v1.12.2): Loading from cache
  - Installing phpseclib/phpseclib (2.0.23): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/core (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/auth (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/email (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/oil (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/orm (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/parser (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache
  - Updating fuel/docs (1.8.0 => 1.8.2): Loading from cache

which updates to 1.8.2 just fine, which suggests either an issue in your composer.json or composer.lock.

This is what I tested with:

{
    "name": "fuel/fuel",
    "type": "project",
    "description" : "FuelPHP is a simple, flexible, community driven PHP 5.4+ framework, based on the best ideas of other frameworks, with a fresh start!",
    "keywords": ["application", "website", "development", "framework", "PHP", "PHP7"],
    "license": "MIT",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.4",
        "composer/installers": "~1.0",
        "fuel/core": "1.8.*",
        "fuel/auth": "1.8.*",
        "fuel/email": "1.8.*",
        "fuel/oil": "1.8.*",
        "fuel/orm": "1.8.*",
        "fuel/parser": "1.8.*",
        "fuelphp/upload": "2.0.6"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "fuel/docs": "1.8.*"
    },
    "suggest": {
        "dwoo/dwoo" : "Allow Dwoo templating with the Parser package",
        "mustache/mustache": "Allow Mustache templating with the Parser package",
        "smarty/smarty": "Allow Smarty templating with the Parser package",
        "twig/twig": "Allow Twig templating with the Parser package",
        "pyrocms/lex": "Allow Lex templating with the Parser package",
        "mthaml/mthaml": "Allow Haml templating with Twig supports with the Parser package",
        "zordius/lightncandy": "Allow Handlebars templating with an extremely fast PHP implementation of handlebars"
    },
    "config": {
        "vendor-dir": "fuel/vendor"
    },
    "extra": {
        "installer-paths": {
            "fuel/{$name}": ["fuel/core"],
            "{$name}": ["fuel/docs"]
        }
    },
    "scripts": {
        "post-install-cmd": [
            "php oil r install"
        ]
    },
    "minimum-stability": "stable"
}