Re: milestone moment for the PEAR 1.4.0 effort

Stefan Neufeind wrote:

I thought about things like "Install guestbook under URL ..." or so, e.g. for ISPs. This would mean that you'd need to be able to specify a dir where the app should be installed. And it should be able to double-install imho. Maybe it would also be possible (optional?) to have common files in a central location and just copy the necessary html-pages, templates etc. upon each install. Idea would be that you *can* upgrade all installations of that webapp on the same server, or do the update selectively (e.g. per cusomer, upon his request).

This is far too complex to do generically. Each host is going to have different requirements. The changes I've made will make it easier to do this, as an application can split up its common files and its user-specific files into separate packages. The common files can be installed into a system location, and the user files installed into user directories using shell scripts. Updates can also be along the same lines. In other words, I think what you describe is a job for shell scripting, not the PEAR installer. If you can provide an easy (not just simple) way to do some of these things that makes sense, I don't see why it couldn't be included. The work I've been doing is at the limit of my capacities. Greg