PEAR

This is a book I have been awaiting for a quite long time! The book about new version of the PEAR Installer (note: PEAR Installer is part of the PEAR package), the package that allows you to deploy your PHP projects anywhere without a hassle.

As of version 1.4.0, PEAR (Installer) contains channel support, that allows PHP developers to deploy their PHP projects via their own channel server!

As a PHP developer, you might had been playing with the idea to automate deployment processes for your PHP (web)applications, right? OK, maybe not. Frankly, I don't know anyone else in person, who would have tried to do deployment of the entire websites, or PHP applications using PEAR Installer and own channel server. I hope this book will change this  soon.

I work on a new project, or rather on a set of small projects by creating small PEAR packages, that will provide my own native PEAR commands.

My intention is to create simple tools, that would potentially save me a lot of time when it comes to repetitive tasks. See for example my Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database package which is the first official package of the whole project).

I reckon "don't repeat yourself" is a good rule, however, you have to put a lot of energy to create such a tools to be able to do so. Hence, why I started work on this "project".

I discussed the idea of the project in our cosy private IRC chat room with Jim to get his opinions on this.

Note: You can read about the importance of instant feedback in a post by Matt on 37signals's blog.

Anyway, if you think about repetitive tasks, it is mostly about some sort of generation of something. Generation of code, configurations, and so on.

And here comes the problem. Actually, not really a problem, but rather something worth to discuss, before you start doing generators of any sort.

So, the thing is that in some cases it is not very clear who owns the copyright of the generated code!

Jim, raised the question about this on RoR's forum bridge.

And if case you're interested, you can also read his thoughts about it, in his post Who owns your code?

As for my project, I think I need to spend some time over the weekend re-reading parts of Innovation happens elsewhere, where open source licencing and copyright issues are discussed very well and also keep my eye on the RoR forum's discussion to see where it will go.

And as for now: "All your code are belong to us …"

I've packaged and deployed to my PEAR channel new version of Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database package.

For those of you who don't know what is it about, this package provides native PEAR commands for DB_DataObject and MDB2_Schema packages which will help you when it comes to generating DB DataObject classes and/or MDB2 schemas.

For more information about the package please read my previous Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database package entry.

Actually, I'd be interested if anyone uses this package (beside me and those of you who I bothered with it ). Please, leave me a comment if you're using it. Thanks!

Here are the release notes for version 1.0.3:

Fix: short options for 'mdb2-create-schema' command were too long (2 characters) instead of   required one character which caused that after installation almost all PEAR commands disappeared   and it was unpossible to do anything with the PEAR repository.In case you have previus version installed and this happend to you. Solution how to fix this   is to remove all files of this package (lib/PEAR/Command/Database.xml and   lib/PEAR/Command/Database.php) and upgrade to this, fixed, version.

Important note: This version contains following options set for MDB2 Schema

• portability = MDB2_PORTABILITY_ALL ^ MDB2_PORTABILITY_FIX_CASE
• seqcol_name = id

I use PEAR a lot. All my current work is based on PEAR libraries (only) and I create and deploy everything via PEAR. I think it's been two or three years since I started playing with PEAR extensively.

Because of that, I need quite a lot of PEAR repositories for development, testing, staging, live versions, etc. That's a quite a lot of repositories considering number of projects I work on.

I think it is a good practice to have one repository per project and per purpose. Although, for development purposes I usually use only one global repository with recent version of all packages I need. But testing, staging and especially live versions of my applications are in separate PEAR repositories.

Therefore, creation of new PEAR repository is sort of routine task for me.

I've tried quite a few ways of doing it, but here's the one I use mostly, because it's quick and safe way how to get new local PEAR repository in a few seconds.

It is a first package deployed via my channel pear.kuziel.info.

It provides commands for two PEAR libraries. DB DatabObject and MDB2 Schema.

Installation

Here's the real example of what the help text of my (Very Lite) PEAR Channel Frontend Serendipity plugin says.
To discover my channel and install this package run:

pear channel-dicover pear.kuziel.info
pear install kuziel/Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database

DB DataObject: dbdo-create-table

This command is replacement for original createTables.php from DB DataObject package.

It generates DB DatabObject classes and database (schema) ini file for given DB DatabObject configuration ini file.

For more information about the configuration have a look at DB DataObject Configuration Options documentation.

Run it:

pear dbdo-create-tables /full/path/to/your/your-dbdo.ini

pear dbdo-create-tables your-dbdo.ini

If you like shortcuts, you can use 'ddct' as a shortcut for 'dbdo-create-tables'. So, the previous example can also look like:

pear ddct your-dbdo.ini

MDB2 Schema

There are two commands available for MDB2 Schema package, only command 'mdb2-create-schema' is working at the moment. There is also second command 'mdb2-update-schema' available, however, it is not implemented yet.

MDB2 Schema: mdb2-create-schema

This command creates MDB2 Schema (xml) file for given database.

If you run it like this:

pear mdb2-create-schema pgsql://username:password@host/database

Shortcut for the command 'mdb2-create-schema' is 'mdb2cs'. So previous example would look like:

pear mdb2cs pgsql://username:password@host/database

Note: MDB2 Schema package has some issues with table names (, or more precisely with underscores in your table names), so this command may fail if you don't have "correct" table names.

Help information

For more information about the commands run:

pear help dbdo-create-tables
pear help mdb2-create-schema

Note: At the moment Kuziel_PEAR_Command_Database package has its dependencies set for DB DataObject and MDB2 Schema only as optional, not required. It's because you may want to use only DB DataObject, or only MDB2 Schema command. If it is not obvious, you have to have those packages installed if you want to use their commands .

I have created small Serendipity plugin for displaying information about your PEAR channel.

It is sidebar plugin which shows list of categories with sublisted packages within the each category. Mouse over the package name shows summary of the package.

It allows you to:

• define your channel's 3rd party frontend and administration pages.
• decide if to show help for installation and channel discovery.
• choose categories from your channel server to hide (ie. 'Default' category you may be not using at all).

It is still just in very basic code. It really just does the minumum, but I think it provides enough information of what categories and what packages are deployed via my channel.

I need to add few more checkings and clean it up a bit, but I think I can release it in next few days.

You can see how it works on the right side of this log.