[ANNOUNCEMENT] PEAR-1.4.0b2 (beta) Released.

The new PEAR package PEAR-1.4.0b2 (beta) has been released at http://pear.php.net/. Release notes ------------- This is a major milestone release for PEAR. In addition to several killer features, every single element of PEAR has a regression test, and so stability is much higher than any previous PEAR release, even with the beta label. New features in a nutshell: * full support for channels * pre-download dependency validation * new package.xml 2.0 format allows tremendous flexibility while maintaining BC * support for optional dependency groups and limited support for sub-packaging * robust dependency support * full dependency validation on uninstall * remote install for hosts with only ftp access - no more problems with restricted host installation * full support for mirroring * support for bundling several packages into a single tarball * support for static dependencies on a uri-based package * support for custom file roles and installation tasks Specific changes from 1.4.0b1: * configure options were not being prompted for packages like pecl/PDO * use file_get_contents() wherever possible in favor of fread($fp, filesize($file)) as this is deprecated behavior and won't work with streams at all in PHP 5.1 * fix CLI frontend in PHP 5.0+ with CGI version * fix Bug #5240: Unnecessary assign by reference in PEAR_ErrorStack * fix Bug #5285: Incorrect dependency on PEAR_RemoteInstall should be PEAR_RemoteInstaller * fix Bug #5322: Clean up docs and handling of exceptions Package Info ------------- The PEAR package contains: * the PEAR installer, for creating, distributing and installing packages * the beta-quality PEAR_Exception PHP5 error handling mechanism * the beta-quality PEAR_ErrorStack advanced error handling class * the PEAR_Error error handling mechanism * the OS_Guess class for retrieving info about the OS where PHP is running on * the System class for quick handling of common operations with files and directories * the PEAR base class Related Links ------------- Package home: http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR Changelog: http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR/download/1.4.0b2 Download: http://pear.php.net/get/PEAR-1.4.0b2.tgz Authors ------------- Stig Bakken <stig@php.net> (lead) Thomas V.V.Cox <cox@idecnet.com> (lead) Martin Jansen <mj@php.net> (helper) Pierre-Alain Joye (lead) Greg Beaver (lead)