memory usage issues in PEAR 1.4.0

bertrand Gugger wrote:

Why not have the pear detach a second process just building the "database" and then answering its parent (the pear installer) on inquiries thru a pipe ? So you divide and get speed with less individual resource usage. I know it's some unix view, but I'm certain MS furnish similar ways. OK again, just future sight here :)

I've done some tracing, and the problem is not actually in the code - I reached the memory limit of 8 MB before all of the code is even completely loaded into memory when using Zend (which adds some junk for debugging). If you want to prove it, try this script: <?php require_once 'PEAR/Remote.php'; var_dump(memory_get_usage()); ?> This will only work in php 5, btw. The output I get is: bash-2.05b$ /usr/local/Zend/ZendStudioClient-4.0.0/bin/php5/php test.php Content-type: text/html X-Powered-By: PHP/5.0.3 int(7436608) 7.4 MB to do this. There is no way I can improve the memory situation without removing a ton of features. Greg