Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:95597
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 74.125.82.45 as permitted sender)
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CANaX5nf5S6aS-ZaB=51qvXv+wbReGb2petPBDogTA+MNMHyysQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <b3bd7acf-a525-d921-1b1b-64ccf94b858b@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2016 15:45:13 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/45.2.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CANaX5nf5S6aS-ZaB=51qvXv+wbReGb2petPBDogTA+MNMHyysQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with
 composer/pickle
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 02/09/2016 20:32, Davey Shafik wrote:
> I'd like to introduce a new RFC to deprecate pear/pecl (in 7.2, and remove
> in 8.0), as well as add composer/pickle (optional in 7.2, default in 7.3+)
> in their place.
>
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate-pear-include-composer

Hi Davey,

I think this is a sensible idea. It basically accepts the reality that 
PEAR is no longer the main place new users of PHP should look for 
3rd-party code.

Thinking about the responses so far, I thought it would be useful to 
enumerate just what PEAR is, and what is being proposed for removal. It 
might even be worth adding a version of this to the RFC, in case it 
reaches a wider audience who won't see this discussion.

As I understand it, PEAR is:

A1) A command-line package management tool for installing and updating 
packages of PHP code over the Internet.
A2) A curated default "channel" for the package management tool, at 
pear.php.net
A3) The coding style guidelines for publishing on that channel
A4) An ecosystem of packages built to those guidelines

While PECL is:

B1) A related command-line tool for managing extensions to PHP itself.
B2) A default channel for the extension management tool, at pecl.php.net

The command-line tools (A1 and B1 above) are currently distributed with 
PHP by default, and this is what we are looking to deprecate. Composer 
is the common choice to fill the role of A1, and "pickle" is being 
proposed as the official replacement for B1. Everything else will still 
be there, including the ability to download the tools, probably through 
your OS or stack's package management system.


As to the rest, a few rambling thoughts:

- There is no single replacement for pear.php.net. packagist.org 
partially fulfils job A2, but it is a marketplace, not a curated 
channel, and it doesn't do anything to standardise style (A3) or 
interoperability (A4). PHP-FIG is one attempt to fill that 
standardisation; it's entirely voluntary, and entirely separate from 
php.net, but it's not like anyone was ever forced to publish on 
pear.php.net.

- pear.php.net is technically only one "channel" compatible with the 
tool, but I'm not sure how many others are out there in practice. As a 
random example, I know that Swift Mailer used to maintain a PEAR 
channel, but checking back it is now officially unsupported: 
http://pear.swiftmailer.org/

- On the flip side, many of the packages that are published on 
pear.php.net are also available on packagist.org for installation with 
composer, either in this list https://packagist.org/packages/pear/ or in 
unofficial forks.

- The PEAR coding style would probably be considered "out of date" by a 
lot of PHP devs. That's partly a matter of fashion, but also a natural 
consequence of it predating certain language features - autoloading, 
namespaces, etc - which people want to take advantage of.

- There is a "PEAR2" consisting of the "pyrus" tool, and pear2.php.net. 
It appears to be basically abandoned, although it is still prominently 
linked from pear.php.net. I assume pyrus never made into the default 
distribution of PHP?


Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]