A Democratic Innovation for PHP: PEAR Channels

The most important innovation of the PEAR installer is PEAR channels, something that no other package distribution mechanism supports. PEAR channels are a simple way to easily install packages from multiple sources over the Internet.

Through the use of PEAR channels, applications can reliably depend on code from several unrelated sources. Some of the more prominent channels are:

• pear.php.net: PEAR itself is a channel

• pecl.php.net: PECL is for PHP extensions what PEAR is to regular PHP packages

• gnope.org: PHP-GTK2 channel

• pear.chiaraquartet.net: The first PEAR channel outside the php.net domain

• components.ez.no: eZ components PEAR channel

• pearified.com: source of PEAR-packaged Smarty, phpMyAdmin and others

Also of interest are channel aggregators like:

• http://www.pearadise.com: Tobias Schlitt's PEAR channel aggregator

• http://www.pearified.com: The channel aggregator portion of the pearified channel

• http://www.upear.com: Another aggregator

Each PEAR channel distributes code fitting a wide variety of needs.