September 20, 2005 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Gregory Beaver (cellog@xxxxxxx) As of Sunday, September 18, 2005, the PEAR installer has reached maturity as an enterprise-level installation tool for PHP code. The release of version 1.4.0 stable ushers in several essential features for management of PHP extensions and packages. 1. PEAR channels (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/guide.migrating.channels.php) 2. Better handling of PECL extensions and dependencies on PECL packages (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/guide.developers.package2.peclinfo.php) (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/guide.developers.package2.dependencies.php) 3. more than 650 regression tests in .phpt format 4. extensive application support through addition of post-install scripts, custom file roles and file tasks, and the new bundle package type (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/guide-migrating.php) PEAR Channels provide a unique distributed installation paradigm. By distributing packages through a channel, users can install and configure an application with a single step rather than the old download/unzip/tinker system. For instance, if a high-quality package is written that is licensed under the GNU license, it cannot be distributed through pear.php.net or pecl.php.net. Now, it is possible to set up a channel like the hypothetical "pear.example.com" and distribute it that way. The user can then install this package just like any other with: $ pear install pear.example.com/Packagename Better yet, developers can depend on this package in their own packages, removing the need to bundle dependencies. Critical security fixes for dependencies can be quickly updated without requiring a release for the main application. For PHP extensions written in C/C++, the new "pecl" command provides a more robust way to install and upgrade PECL packages. In addition, for PECL developers, several enhancements to the way dependencies work allow the PEAR installer to properly detect a PECL extension regardless of whether it was built into PHP, a shared module, or installed via the "pecl" command. All of these new features come with additional stability, thanks to the use of over 650 .phpt-based regression tests. In the development of PEAR 1.4.0, several low-level design flaws were uncovered in PEAR 1.3.6 and earlier that have all been fixed in version 1.4.0. All new features have been rigorously tested both through regression tests and in the wild with an extensive alpha- and beta-testing period that covered nearly a year. The PEAR installer now has far greater application support. The addition of post-installation scripts allows standardized customization of packages. Custom file roles and file tasks allow granular configuration of packages at the file level. In addition, distribution of large applications can be simplified with the new "bundle" package type. Bundles allow distributing a package and all of its dependencies in a single file. PEAR (http://pear.php.net) is the official code repository of the PHP project (http://www.php.net). In addition to providing the PEAR installer, PEAR provides high-quality object-oriented libraries through pear.php.net, and PHP extensions through pecl.php.net. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
