Re: Questions about PEAR

Hi Johnny, As stated in the PEAR site, the PEAR group is just an admin organism for the project, which is made by a much bigger team of volunteer developers. Also, some of your questions are already answered/implemented in pear.php.net. On 8/25/05, johnny khawand <johnny.khawand@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > first i want to thank you for the great work you have done for now. > because i started using PEAR and i find it very usefull. > but i have some questions and remarques about it: > > 1.is there or is it possible that someday there will be an API Reference for the packages like > the one that comes with Java and shows the hierarchy between Classes? Hmm, this is almost always done for every single released packaged in PEAR. Did you see for example the page for DB (http://pear.php.net/package/DB)? There is a tab there named "Documentation" which contains (as you would expect) not one but every single API for every released version. Read more about the coding/documentation standards in the PEAR manual. > 2.do you follow the UML standard and is there going to be UML models (Class Diagram) about > PEAR? (What is below is *my* personal opinion) PHP != Java, and the lifetime of an object in PHP running under Apache (or another server) is not the same as a servlet running on (for example) Tomcat. So you can do beautiful, but unrealistic designs for web apps in PHP if you see the world through UML glasses. UML is a tool, not an end in itself, neither a replacement for good design practice and experience, nor always the best possible solution for a system in which the underlying protocol is stateless. Apart from the main requirement of a sound organization and a segregation of classes per files, there is no recommendation that everyone should do the utmost perfect UML-based design. Each package is under the control of its maintainers, and the scrutiny of whoever users it. I'd like to be enligthened about what advantages would everyone gain from requiring UML strict design, apart from having nice class diagrams we can then print and use to decorate our offices :-) > 3.is there a specific development environemment that we can find PEAR integrated in it? PEAR is a collection of packages, so some projects use it. As to integration with an IDE, well as all libraries in PHP, you can make your editor grok the code (I use vi/vim, and do that). So far I have not seen 3rd party tools for development that *integrate* (btw, what exactly do you mean by this in the context of a group of general libraries?) PEAR, so I guess the need has not arisen yet, or someone has not had that particular itch to be scratched. > 4.if it is possible to put links on the PEAR to some sites that have solutions for the above > questions? Send them our way. There is usually not a problem, unless the link is fake, contain decieving information, point to a phishing site, etc. In fact, several of the packages do point to off-site home page, documentation, eg. http://pear.php.net/package/phpdocumentor > and finally hope i become expert with PEAR so i can help instead of just bothering :) . > > Thank You. Subscribe to pear-dev, where these questions could've been answered in more detail by the other people in the community. We should move this conversation there (I am CC'ing this answer to the PEAR developer's list). Cheers. -- Jesus M. Castagnetto <jmcastagnetto@php.net> PEAR stuff: http://pear.php.net/user/jmcastagnetto Web site: http://www.castagnetto.org/