My experience becoming a new PEAR developer

Hi! Today, I released my first PEAR package. It was an interesting experience discovering the process to create, propose and submit a new package. Here are some of the things I learned in the process, that could help other new developers, as well as help improving documentation. == The formal proposal process == The first thing I learned there is that even if I already had a PEAR account to fill bug reports, I needed another karma to be able to use PEPr. A little email on pear-dev allowed me to get it. Another surprise I had was that PHP4 package no longer were accepted. I could had deduced it from the fact that code must be E_STRICT, but I think this is something that would worth being explicitly mentioned in documentation. Other little details about coding standards: don't use define, but class constants. Don't use PHP License. == Contributing your own code == After proposing my package, calling for vote, and having it accepted, I had some troubles finding what to do next. Although the page http://pear.php.net/manual/en/developers.contributing.howto.php contains all needed informations, I think it could be clearer. Here is how I understand the procedure now: 1- Request PHP CVS account 2- checkout pear repository 3- Request to pear-group write access to needed directory into CVS repository 4- commit package to CVS 5- Use http://pear.php.net/package-new.php to add the package 6- Use http://pear.php.net/release-upload.php to release the package == Questions still pending == Now, there are still some details in the process I don't fully understand. 1- Once a package is approved in PEPr, how can I be sure I applied all requested changes? Shouldn't be there an iterative approval process before first release? 2- How should I determine when to release beta and stable releases? 3- off topic, but what is the 'CVS Access' field for in the pear profile page? == Conclusion == I learned a lot learning how to contribute to PEAR. I like the fact that other developers review your code. I really like the high coding standard of PEAR, that ensure high quality code over the project. And big thanks to all of you who take time to answer questions and to review code! Charles Brunet.