PEAR
PEAR (http://pear.php.net/) is the PHP Extension and Add-on Repository.
It's a glue framework, meaning it contains independent packages that can be chosen and "glued" together in your application to meet your requirements. Since PEAR dates back to the origins of PHP, it is oftentimes an underlying requirement for basic PHP functionality which other developers build upon. For a hypothetical example, you could have a Drupal module developer use an underlying PEAR package for critical functionality at the system level, while the module proper deals with application integration and extension of Drupal capabilities.
PEAR is also a packaging and code distribution system using a command-line application (think apt-get). There is actually a web front-end available too for managing PEAR packages. See http://blog.jldupont.com/2008/03/pear-web-installer.html for more on that.
Notable PEAR developers:
- Brion Vibber (CTO of MediaWiki Foundation) is now a PEAR developer http://leuksman.com/log/
- Jean-Lou Dupont http://blog.jldupont.com/2008/03/pear-web-installer.html (his mediawiki extensions are at http://code.google.com/p/mediawiki/ - although he is not actively developing for MediaWiki)
- Gregory Beaver
# update your pear installation
sudo pear upgrade pear
# add Jean-lou Dupont's channel
sudo pear channel-discover mediawiki.googlecode.com/svn
# install the web front-end
sudo pear install PEAR_Frontend_WEB
# which fails because it's 'beta' and our package preference is set to 'stable'
# therefore install it specifically
sudo pear install channel://pear.php.net/PEAR_Frontend_WEB-0.7.4
