Re: Help with submitting my first package

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Gregory Beaver wrote:

Peter Beckman wrote:

Yep, that's good. :-) Why isn't it in the pear repository? With Perl, I'm know that if it exists, it is likely in CPAN. With PHP, it's often not in PEAR. Heck, I've written some things for PEAR and the process to get it into pear is grueling and badly documented (or I can't find the documentation on how to do it, step by step).

PEAR does not try to be CPAN in that the goal is to have consistently reliable, high quality packages rather than to offer everything under the sun, but it is hard to argue that if a package doesn't even exist that it is of a higher quality :). I and many others have noticed problems with the process of getting packages into PEAR. We're re-evaluating how we make big decisions like the way packages are accepted and other things of this nature with an ongoing referendum.

I think that is definitely needed. Is high quality versus lots of code the best way? CPAN I believe gets better and better because once the code passes some minor tests, the code is added and is open to the public. Automated testing makes sure code continues to work or notify authors if not. If a tool is there and the framework built, finding problems or enhancements becomes a community thing. Having volunteers spending days/weeks pouring over code makes the process onerous, tiring and frankly may keep good quality code from ever getting into PEAR in the first place. Write a script to make sure the code meets coding requirements so I can test it without a human before submission! I _CAN_ write good code, and the peer review is nice, but the lack of documentation on how to get your code into the proper format (package.xml being the most confusing and dumbfounding piece, with little to no documentation on how to generate/create it step-by-step -- I'm sure its easy once you know, but until then, I don't get it) keeps my code out of PEAR. Even posting here hasn't really helped -- Nobody can help me find documentation on how to build my package for PEAR, nobody seems to have any documents on it, and while the coding standards are very clear, the whole directory layout, files required, etc is nowhere to be found.

Hopefully we can make some substantial improvements very soon. Of course, if you have any specific changes you'd like to see, we welcome patches to the documentation (peardoc/ in cvs.php.net) or infrastructure (pearweb/ in cvs.php.net). The website, for instance, has a newly created roadmap at http://pear.php.net/bugs/roadmap.php?package=pearweb that shows the direction we're heading on that end, at least for the near future.

Have there been any results from your efforts? I know it's a lot to take on. I just want something like CPAN for PHP, and right now, PEAR isn't it, and doesn't seem to be moving that way either. Beckman ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman@purplecow.com                             http://www.purplecow.com/

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