by Alan Knowles (alan_k@php.net)
At present the weekly news is currently bi-weekly due to time
constraints, again a busy two weeks with over 300 messages on the
mailing list, and over 200 commits to CVS. some interesting discussion
on PEAR package licensing, phpdocumentor, the pear web installer, a new
imagick binding and 5 new packages, including Many advanced Math tools,
A bar code generator and a new socket set.
PEAR-DEV traffic
Contributing to PEAR and License implications
There was considerable discussion in the last couple of weeks about
including GPL'ed code in PEAR, while most developers are not keen on an
outright ban, the implications of having a code library that affects
applications that use it is significant, and the general consensus was
that when contributing authors will be asked if they can change to the
slightly more library (and more suited to libraries) LGPL license.
However for PECL libraries, it is likely that accepting GP code will be
impossible due to the linking requirements and incompatibility with the
PHP license.
PHP Documenter now available from PEAR
After a few efforts Greg Beaver finally got the package format sorted
out, and has made available PHP Documenter available via the pear
installer.
New Release of PEAR web installer
Christian Dickmann announced another release of his easy to use Web
based pear installer, ideal for those using hosted solutions or just too
lazy to learn the command line options. You can download it and read
the instructions at
http://dickmann.homeunix.org/pear/go-pear.html
New Imagemagick bindings to replace the current PECL::imagick
Michael Montero announced a totally new binding for the imagemagick
toolkit, after some discussion it was decided that it will replace the
existing PECL::imagick by Christian Stocker. The new bindings offer a
number of new features, however break Backwards compatibility with the
previous extension. There are also plans underway to make a Object based
API available as an alternative to the current classic php functional
methods.
Bugs and Fixes
Thanks to these people for spotting and fixing some bugs: Thomas
Schulz, Jesus M. Castagnetto, Christian Dickmann and Derick Rethans.
New and Proposed Packages
101 Maths with Jesus M. Castagnetto - Math_Complex, Math_TrigOp and
Math_Quaternion
Jesus M. Castagnetto has offered a number of mathematical calculation
classes, for doing Complex numbers (the square root of -1), Trigonometry
and Quaternion (no I've no idea what that is..)
Mark it with Image_Barcode
Marcelo Subtil Marcal announced a library draw barcodes using the
GDlib.
Sockets - a new richer set of Socket tools
Stephan Seidt announced a complete set of tools for dealing with
Sockets (a good alternative to the existing Net_Socket), which can deal
not only with classic TCP sockets, but also UDP and Unix domain sockets,
along with the ability to implement socket servers.
Development
Active on CVS this week has been Auth, Config, Date, DB_DataObject,
Excel, File_HtAccess, HTML_Javascript, HTML_QuickForm, HTML_Select,
HTML_Table, I18N, Image_GraphViz, Log, Math_Complex,
Math_Quaternion, Math_TrigOp, Math)Vecotr, MDB, Message, Net_Dict,
Net_Ident, PEAR_Frontend_Web, PECL::apd, PECL::imagic,
PECL::mailparse, PECL::soap, PECL::spread, PECL::uuid,
Perm_LiveUser, Validate, XML_sql2xml, XML_Transformer, XML_XSLT_Wrapper
and the PEAR installer.