by Mika Tuupola (tuupola@appelsiini.net), Pierre-Alain Joye (paj@pearfr.org)
This week was quiet too, but we smelt nice activities. If any of you feel
like a future doc writer, you will certainly appreciate this little
PEARDoc2 references wroten by Alexander Merz.
We thank Frank M. Kromann for the publication of the PECL binaries for Windows,
as well as php4/5 with near all extensions, all is available at kromann.info. Thank's
to Urs Gehrig for the link (www.circle.ch).
The package of the week is the fresh Mono extension by Sterling Hughes.
Don't ask me, ask google!
PEAR/PECL's advantages will be different for every situation; in general,
I see 2 big advantages:
Evangelism - making PEAR the de-facto resource. Its current framework/system is pretty robust; Stig and the team have done a great job building it, now its time to let them come.
Mono is an open source implementation of various components in the .NET
framework. The Mono extension is concerned with the Common Language Runtime
(CLR) portion of Mono. CLR is a common bytecode to which all .NET languages
are compiled. Compilers are currently available for C#, C++, C, VB.NET,
and Java.
CLR aims to commoditize the language syntax. Use different languages for
different purposes. If you prefer to write web frontends in PHP, but
all your backend code in C or C# - do so! Previously interfacing with
such code was inefficient, and required either a protocol bridge, such
as COM or DCOM, or writing an extension, often very time consuming. .NET
is a functionality upgrade: everything is the under the same hood.
The mono extension allows you to access .NET assemblies (called "hosting").
It works much like the Java extension, using Mono to do the dirty work.
For example, the quintessential Hello World, with a .NET twist:
<?php
$Console = new Mono('System.Console');
$Console->WriteLine('Hello World');
?>
George and I need the same thing: a billion dollars. I, however, will settle for lesser amounts, like a million or a couple hundred thousand. Just use the package! If you find bugs, or have questions drop me an email, sterling@php.net.
Thank's to Sterling Hughes for this interview. A short introduction has been publishedhere
PEAR was shortly mentioned in February 2003 issue of php|architect in Data Fingerprinting with Hash Functions in PHP written by Leon Vismer.
If you come accross PEAR related article article feel free to send (pear-dev@lists.php.net) us the references and they will be added to the weekly news.
Lukas Smith announced he committed the first working Oracle MDB driver to CVS. The driver passes all but the manager tests.
There was some discussion on should PEAR have JavaScript packages. Consensus was PEAR should not host standalone JavaScript applications. Packages such as HTML_TreeMenu which has optional features when JavaScript is enabled should have the JavaScripts included in their own package. In addition, some JavaScript features could be included in HTML_JavaScript.
Sterling Hughes committed his Mono extension to PECL. This extension allows PHP to access .NET assemblies via the Mono library.
Bruno Pedro proposed a new SOAP storage driver for the Auth package. At the time of writing it can allready be found from CVS.
Active on CVS this week have been: Crypt_CHAP, Auth_RADIUS, Auth, Text_Statistics, HTML_Template_Flexy, Auth_HTTP, HTML_Template_Xipe, MDB, HTML_QuickForm, Tree, Mail_Mime, Search_MnogoSearch, SOAP, PECL::bcompiler, Net_Ping, DBA, Log, DB_DataObject, File_Passwd, HTML_TreeMenu, Net_Whois, DB, HTTP_Header, PECL::fribidi, PECL::mono