Re: [phplib] phplib migration into PEAR From: Bertrand Mansion (bmansion <email protected>)
Date: 03/06/01

le 6/03/01 10:48, Ulf Wendel à ulf.wendel <email protected> a écrit :

> Tell me your impressions on PEAR so that I can write a good and fair
> article which hopefully leads to a broader discussion on PEAR and helps

In the PEAR CVS tree, there are a lot of not so useful stuff, classes which
could have been developed later. In PHPLIB, there are a lot of vital stuff
for web application development : Authentication, Templates, Sessions, DB,
forms (which I still haven't used)...

The development of PEAR goes in every directions and it seems that more
efforts are made to check if name conventions are respected than to actually
create a useful, fast and easy to implement tool. PEAR is missing a
framework and directions. If the goal of this project is not to make web
application development easier, faster or more portable, then I probably
won't need it. And there is no documentation on how to use PEAR classes.

At the moment, the closest competition to PEAR is www.hotscripts.com, not
PHPlib. PHPlib is useful. Everyday, I use its classes. An effort has been
made to document it. Efforts are also made by the community to keep it up to
date. The only problem I see with PHPlib is that it has not been updated
when it should have. The stable version 7.2c doesn't work with PHP4 as is.
The documentation should be completed. Great projects like IT[X] or PHP4
Sessions should be documented and integrated.

I have used PHPlib for the first time when I started to play with PHP. I was
really thankful there was a documentation on netuse website. If I had to do
the same today, I would certainly forget about PHPlib and find another
solution. Wouldn't you ?

The only advantage I see in PEAR is that it is going to be included in PHP
releases, so everyone will have access to it. But for how long ? PEAR will
probably grow. Is PERL released with all CPAN classes ?

According to me, the solution depends on PHPlib community resources. Do we
have time and will to maintain PHPlib, its DB abstraction layer for example
? If not, it seems that more and more people will use and maintain PEAR, so
the solution is probably to change to this layer. But at the moment, I think
there are still more people using PHPlib than PEAR so we can take advantage
of this situation and keep on going on our own. For that, we need people to
take care of the source and make updated and consistent release regularly
and a place especially dedicated to these efforts. Otherwise, I guess PHPlib
will disapPEAR...

These are only my feelings about the PHPLIB-PEAR debate. I don't want to
hurt anyone and apologize if I did as English is not my mother tongue :-)

Hope to see something happen...

Bertrand Mansion
tapage.fr

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