PEAR installer - ideas....

Hi, I have been looking at the installer on pear for some more generic uses, here are the two situations 1. I would like my application to install into the PEAR directory (not supplied by PEAR, but installed in that directory..) 2. I wanted to use the CVSLib from chora, but I dont want to copy the code into my application (and keep updating it manually), I needed a way to create a downloader that would install it using http calls to chora.. Looking at the current situation with the pear installer (ignoring C extension issues at present..) I had the following issues At present the Pear installer depends on extensions :zlib, expat and Pear module Archive_tar (not sure what else....) from the angle here = the base installer should not depend on anything other than php existing. I built an installer for phpmole, and intend to use it to try and solve the CVSLib problem, These are some of the ideas I used to build it - they may be worth considering for the PEAR installer. 1. The package.xml can contain a 4 line script to access the installer script. see note at end about #php package.xml 2. the core installer is a single small php file. - Its purpose is to download (if the not already installed, the key classes to run a installer) 3. the key files that the installer grabs are: a pure php based xml parser/tree builder, and the installer class. 4. the package definition file is extended to include meta data about dependancies, download location etc. The working code is at Installer : http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/phpmole-ide/phpmole/installer/installer.php?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup Installer class: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/phpmole-ide/phpmole/installer/phpmole_installer.class?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup HTML/XML parser base class: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/phpmole-ide/phpmole/languages/HTML/parser_HTML_base.class?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup XML tree builder/manager: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/phpmole-ide/phpmole/languages/XML/parser_XML.class?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup Details of Extra package meta data: DEPENDENCIES <depends> <executable>ci</executable> <executable>co</executable> <executable>rcs</executable> <module>php_gtk</module> <class>Gtk</class> <class>GtkScintilla</class> </depends> - support for checking if extensions are available/ and whether it can find executables. RECOMMENDS <recommends> <module>curl</module> <class>GtkHTML</class> </recommends> - support for recommended modules - things that make the application/module work better. POSTINSTALL <postinstall> <message> --------------INSTALL COMPLETED--------------- some message here --------------FIRE IT UP!--------------------- </message> </postinstall> - post install could also do things like <winexecute> or <unixexecute> to do a set of shell commands. SOURCE <source> <cvsweb>

    <host>cvs.sourceforge.net</host>
    <root>cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi</root>
    <dir>phpmole-ide/phpmole</dir>
    <branch>1.79.2</branch> <!-- eg. php 4_0_7 branch -->
  </cvsweb> </source> -- where to download the application from.. - the example above is cvsweb, but I have written the chora support, and it would not take much to add 'tgz' support. - but since I dont know if the user has zlib/or tar xvfz.. these transports are safer

INSTALLSCRIPT <installer> <script language="php"> $install_file = __FILE__; @include("PEAR/Installer.php"); if (!$pear_installer_loaded) include("http://cvs.php.net/co.php/php4/pear/PEAR/Installer.php?p=1"); </script> </installer> --- The installer could then be started by php package.xml or php http://cvs.php.net/co.php/php4/pear/PEAR/package.xml Anyway - let me know what you think -- not too many flames pls:) regards alan