Question wrt dual-PEAR

Hi, I'm interested into PEAR packaging for debian (I'm currently near to be Debian Developper [1]). I'm really interested into web apps packaging in debian, and mostly in php which is the language I use the most for web apps. The thing is that (IMHO) php, especially PEAR isn't in a very good shape in debian. Our major problem is that We (I say *we* because I've talk a bit with PHP debian maintainer that are /de/ /facto/ PEAR maintainer atm) do not have found any good way to maintain two branch of PEAR on the same box. I'll explain : * we have PEAR libraries that are in real debian packages that live in /usr/share/php/ * OTOH we would like to have a way to allow a user to install with the 'pear' command his packages into /usr/local/share/php, without having to duplicate the whole /usr/share/php tree. Perl e.g. handle such situations quite well, because it checks (IIRC -- i'm not a perl user, not a big fan ;p) if the dependencies exists in the @INC var (or sth equivalent). The problem with PEAR, is that AFAIK all is managed from the .registry directory, and it looks like it's a big stopper to have complementary PEAR trees. Note : I don't want to do a symlink from /usr/local/share/php/.registry to /usr/share/php/.registry for two reasons : (1) I'm not sure there isn't absolute path in it. (2) I want to be possible for the user to have the PEAR::foo package installed from debian package in /usr/share/php, AND e.g. a devel or a beta version of the same PEAR::foo package in /usr/local/share/php which won't work if we share the .registry So the big question is ... is there a solution in PEAR we have missed ? is there a way ? so .. I need some advices :) PS: I'm not subscribed to the list, so *please* Cc: me. [1] : http://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#waiting -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O OOO http://www.madism.org

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