PHP Extension authors - please join the PECL community

Hi Wez,

I'm developing a PHP 5 CORBA extension. It will have an IDL compiler too. Is
PEAR the right place for it ?

Cristiano Duarte

"Wez Furlong" wez@thebrainroom.com escreveu na mensagem
news:Pine.LNX.4.53.0309190031250.29882@zaneeb.brainnet.i...

[Sorry for mass-mailing those of you who are not already subscribed to the
pecl-dev list, but please read on and hopefully you will choose to
subscribe
anyway]

We need to foster a greater sense of community for people writing PHP
extensions, and I have been elected (by unanimous peer pressure!) to be
"The
King of PECL". Quite what this means hasn't been decided, although one of
the major responsibilities is to spark up some community spirit, and that
is
the purpose of this email.

I'm sending it out to all the php-extension projects that I can find to
invite their participation here; if you know of anyone else developing php
extensions, either for public consumption or even for their own internal
purposes, please invite them also.

For those of you that don't know, PECL is the PHP Extension Code Library.
At least, that is the definition of the acronym. Traditionally, PECL was
a
part of PEAR (pear.php.net) and is strongly associated with semi official
PHP extensions that aren't main-stream enough to get into the PHP
distribution. It is also seen as a kind of Siberia for older,
unmaintained
extensions from the PHP core.

These views need to be changed.

My vision for PECL is as the PHP Extension Community Library. Anyone
working on a PHP extension (for whatever purpose) is automatically a part
of
the community. Community membership entitles you to a number of free
benefits:

• Hosting your package downloads on the official PECL site.
  Useful if you don't have the bandwidth or other resources to make your
  extension available.

• Hosting your source code in the official PECL CVS.
  Very useful if other people would like to help you with your work.
  Automated testing and (win32) binary generation - if you use our
  standard
  "PHP test" files, we can periodically run the test suite and post the
  results online - this will help increase the quality of your extension.
  In addition, the PHP snapshot generator can build windows binaries for
  you
  automatically (if you have a windows project file that is!).

• An open packaging and delivery mechanism and tools so that the end-user
  can easily download and install your extension.
  The installation tool is/will be a part of the standard PHP distribution
  and can download and install your package from the internet. Your
  package
  doesn't have to be hosted on the official PECL site for this to work.

• Access to the PECL developer mailing list and archives.
  An essential resource for people having trouble creating their
  extensions,
  people interested in the packaging infrastructure and for general
  announcements affecting extension developers.

• "Advertise" your extension on the PECL site.
  Just coded a new extension? Or released the latest, greatest version of
  your existing extension? Let the masses know about it through the PECL
  site.

You don't have to use any of these things, and don't have to be tied into
the PHP facilities either.

That's the vision.

What we need now is to make it real - not all of the above facilities are
in
place, and some need a bit of juggling around behind the scenes to get
things perfected. There are other issues to discuss such as:

• Code quality and what to do with older un-maintained extensions
  The PHP QA team would like to "enforce" some quality on code hosted in
  the
  PECL CVS. While we won't be going so far as to require rigid
  conformity,
  we will certainly encourage people to use the PHP coding standards in
  their
  hosted projects, as it helps others to help you maintain your code.

• Can anyone host their project in PECL?
  Sure. The only proviso is that the project is useful for something. If
  you already have karma, just go ahead and commit it. If you don't, or
  you don't have a CVS account, you need to apply for one. This requires
  intervention from "big brother" - he is generally a nice guy, but might
  decide not to allow your project if there is a valid reason for that.

  Of course, your project must be under some kind of OpenSource license,
  since the hosting facilities are open to public scrutiny.
  If you aspire to have your extension bundled with the main PHP
  distribution, your code must be released with a PHP-"compatible"
  license.

OK, this email is long enough.

Please make yourselves known on the pecl-dev mailing list if you are
interested in participating in our community - We're looking forward to
hearing from you.

--Wez Furlong
wez@php.net
Author of a bunch of extensions and a php core hacker

To subscribe to the PECL developers mailing list, send email to:

pecl-dev-subscribe@lists.php.net

[Sorry for mass-mailing those of you who are not already subscribed to the
pecl-dev list, but please read on and hopefully you will choose to subscribe
anyway]

We need to foster a greater sense of community for people writing PHP
extensions, and I have been elected (by unanimous peer pressure!) to be "The
King of PECL".

God save the King!

• Hosting your source code in the official PECL CVS.
  Very useful if other people would like to help you with your work.
  Automated testing and (win32) binary generation - if you use our standard
  "PHP test" files, we can periodically run the test suite and post the
  results online - this will help increase the quality of your extension.
  In addition, the PHP snapshot generator can build windows binaries for you
  automatically (if you have a windows project file that is!).

I'm specially interested in that point. I have something like a RFC
about PECL binary creation and distribution, but it definetly needs to
be reviewed by you.

• An open packaging and delivery mechanism and tools so that the end-user
  can easily download and install your extension.
  The installation tool is/will be a part of the standard PHP distribution
  and can download and install your package from the internet. Your package
  doesn't have to be hosted on the official PECL site for this to work.

Of course, from PEAR we offer all our help in this point. Feel free to report any
issue with the installer to make it more compatible with PECL.

Nice to see the hot potatoe falling in good hands ;)

--
Tomas V.V.Cox mailto:cox@idecnet.com