by Alan Knowles (alan_k@php.net)
This week on the PEAR development list saw more activity related to PHP
4.3 release, along with continuing discussion on Virtual File systems, LiveUser
nearing it's first release, some Pear banners and dealing with Zend
Engine 2 issues. Along with 8 new releases (1 stable, 2 beta, 3 alpha and
2 development), two new package proposals and peardoc2 finally hitting CVS.
New Releases
Stable
- Auth - Provides methods for creating an authentication
system using PHP.
Beta
- Tree - Provides methods to read and manipulate trees,
which are stored in a Database or an XML file.
- DBA - Provides a wrapper for the php DBA functions and
can emulates a DBA database using flat files.
Alpha
- PECL::ecasound - A PHP extension that wraps the Ecasound
libraries to provide advanced audio processing capabilities.
- XML_XSLT_Wrapper - Provides simpler, cross-library and
cross commands interface to doing XSL transformations.
- Inline_C - Allows for inline inclusion of C code in
PHP files.
Development
- SQL_Parser - Provides parser and a tokenizer (lexer)
for SQL queries.
- DBA_Relational - Provides an SQL interface to DBA type
databases.
PEAR-DEV traffic
Virtual File Systems
Just a short follow up to last weeks notes on Virtual File systems, Wez Ferlong
sent an email about the new streams feature in PHP4.3, which allows you to
write your own File system driver in PHP, (and use the standard PHP fopen
etc. commands) to access the file system.
Pear in PHP 4.3
As the release of PHP 4.3 draws nears, sorting out the last remaining issues
for the release are high on the priority list, at present, the two key issues
appear to be a mysterious Archive_Tar bug and final testing of the Win32 installer.
Branches for Zend Engine 2
Last week Sebastian Bergmann mentioned that he had branched PHPUnit for Zend
Engine 2, and talked about generally branching packages for the new Engine.
After some discussion, It was concluded that this was not the preferred method
of supporting the new Engine, rather making packages work on both engines
was better, however if it was really not possible then branching would have
to be done.
LiveUser nearing release
Markus Wolff announced that LiveUser was nearing completion, thanking Christian,
Lukas and Pierre-Alain for the their help in bringing the new authentication
/ Permission Framework to this point so quickly.
Some more PEAR banners
Bertrand Mansion posted a link to his PHP banner
which is available to advertise PEAR, and Colin Viebrock responded to a request
for small pear icons by adding a few more to the PEAR support page. Available
as Gifs and Pngs
for Pear
and PECL
Bugs and Fixes
Thanks to these people for spotting bugs and sending fixes: Francisco Benza,
Jason Rust, phpsurf, Paweł Gołaszewski and Urs Gehrig.
New and Proposed Packages
Message for hash calculations and HMAC signatures.
Jesus Castagnetto announced a package to create hashes using the common PHP
hash functions, normally used to verify data messages.
Net_Auth_SASL
Richard Heyes announced a package to implement SASL encryption to communicate
over sockets, this could then be used in common clear text protocols (eg.
SMTP, IMAP and Sieve) to improve security.
Development
Active on CVS this week has been Auth_SASL, Cache_Lite, DBA, DBA_Relational,
HTTP_Request, Inline_C, Log, Message, Net_DIME, Net_Ident, Net_URL, PECL::ecasound,
PECL::python, Perm_LiveUser, SOAP, SOAP_Interop, SQL_Parser, Text_Password,
Tree, XML_Transformer, XML_XSLT_Wrapper and the PEAR installer.
New and updated documentation
PEARdoc2 is now in CVS, under peardoc/peardoc2, so writers should now start
looking at converting old documentation or writing new documentation for it.