The PEAR Installer Manifesto: The PEAR Installer maintainer shows you the power of this code management and deployment system to revolutionize your PHP application development (Paperback)

by Gregory Beaver (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The PEAR Installer maintainer shows you the power of this code management and deployment system to revolutionize your PHP application development

• Learn how to effectively organize your application development from the creator of the latest versions of the PEAR Installer, version 1.4.0 onwards
  
• Bring the power of versioning and rollbacks to your live website
• Embed the PEAR Installer in your web applications to manage plug-ins from a remote server

In Detail

PEAR stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository, and its primary purpose is to support code re-use. PEAR provides both an advanced installer and a code repository. PEAR code is organized into discrete re-usable components called packages. A package consists of a group of files and a descriptor file called package.xml that contains metadata about the package's contents, such as the package version, any special dependencies, and textual information such as the package description and authors.
The software that transforms a package from an inert grouping of files into a dynamic software package is called the PEAR Installer and is itself a PEAR package. In other words, the PEAR Installer can be used to upgrade itself. It truly is a very powerful application.
In short, the PEAR Installer is one of the most effective tools for managing a high-quality software library, high-quality applications, or high-quality websites.

This book will show you a new way of organizing your PHP development, by leveraging the full power of the PEAR Installer. In a sense, the PEAR Installer is a step above a software design pattern, a meta-development pattern that can be used to systematically organize all of your PHP development.

You will learn how to organize your code into packages using the package.xml format. You will learn about the revolutionary new PEAR Channel concept, and how to safely and reliably depend on external PHP libraries from sources such as pear.php.net and other PEAR channels. You will learn about the PEAR_PackageFileManager package, and how to customize individual installations of your PHP code through file roles, file tasks, and post-installation scripts.

In addition, you will learn how to use the power of PEAR to manage your web projects with the PEAR installer to bring the power of versioning and rollbacks to your live website. The synergy of the PEAR Installer and a revision control system like CVS or Subversion is also explored in depth.

Next, you will learn how to set up your own PEAR Channel for distributing PHP applications, both open-source and proprietary closed-source PHP applications that can be secured using technology already built into the PEAR Installer.

Finally, you will learn how to embed the PEAR Installer inside your own web application in order to manage plug-ins from a remote server. The book covers in detail designing a custom plug-in system for a fictitious blog application. The plug-in system is used to manage templates, and the PEAR Installer is used to manage the details of querying the remote server for templates, handling dependencies between versioning, and doing the actual installation process as well.

What you will learn from this book?

• What the PEAR Installer is, and what it can do for you
• Organizing your code into packages using the package.xml format
• Customizing individual installations of your PHP applications through file roles, file tasks, and post-installation scripts
• Using the PEAR installer to bring the power of versioning and rollbacks to your live website
• Getting the PEAR Installer and source control repository working together
• Setting up your own PEAR Channel for distributing your PHP applications
• Embedding the PEAR Installer inside your own web application to manage plug-ins from a remote server

Approach

This book is a comprehensive and well structured tutorial on using PEAR Installer, but it is also much more than that. As the creator of the latest versions of the PEAR Installer (1.4.0+) , the author is passionate about the benefits of a well managed development and deployment process.

The book shows how the PEAR Installer works in detail, and then takes you through a comprehensive tour of how you can apply it all stages of the development lifecycle, with practical examples and advice throughout. It will build your technical skills and understanding, and also widen your perspective on managing an effective development process.

Who this book is written for?

The book is not just for PHP developers who want to understand how the PEAR Installer works, and what it can do for them, but more generally for PHP developers seeking a better way to deploy their applications and manage updates. It does assume that you have a good working knowledge of PHP development, and are dealing with projects of a sufficient scale and complexity to warrant an investment in a structure process.

About the Author
Gregory Beaver has been one of the most active contributors to open-source PHP development since 2001. As the primary developer of important infrastructure software such as phpDocumentor, the PEAR installer, PHP_Archive, PHP_LexerGenerator, and PHP_ParserGenerator as well as co-lead of the Phar PHP extension, Gregory has helped to ease the development needs of PHP developers around the world. After he transformed phpDocumentor from a small project into the most advanced auto-documentation tools for PHP, phpDocumentor was voted second best PHP tool in Germany-based PHP Magazin's 2003 Reader's Choice awards list for best PHP application, and voted third best PEAR package. Currently, he is working to refactor the PEAR installer for PHP 6, as well as helping to lead the PEAR community forward. Gregory blogs about his programming escapades and other news on his blog, Lot 49. Gregory also leads a mysterious double life as the cellist of the internationally renowned Chiara String Quartet with whom he tours the world. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he is a full-time lecturer/artist-in-residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Hixson-Lied College of Fine Arts.

Gregory Beaver

Gregory Beaver has been one of the most active contributors to open-source PHP development since 2001. As the primary developer of important infrastructure software such as phpDocumentor, the PEAR installer, PHP_Archive, PHP_LexerGenerator, and PHP_ParserGenerator as well as co-lead of the Phar PHP extension, Gregory has helped to ease the development needs of PHP developers around the world. After he transformed phpDocumentor from a small project into the most advanced auto-documentation tools for PHP, phpDocumentor was voted second best PHP tool in Germany-based PHP Magazin's 2003 Reader's Choice awards list for best PHP application, and voted third best PEAR package (tinyurl.com/bn7pb). Currently, he is working to refactor the PEAR installer for PHP 6, as well as helping to lead the PEAR community forward. Gregory blogs about his programming escapades and other news on his blog, Lot 49 (greg.chiaraquartet.net). Gregory also leads a mysterious double life as the cellist of the internationally renowned Chiara String Quartet (chiaraquartet.net) with whom he tours the world. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he is a full-time lecturer/artist-in-residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Hixson-Lied College of Fine Arts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811191
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811190
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #541,153 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent overview of the PEAR Installer, June 10, 2007

By	Travis Swicegood "A Practicing Quasi-Intellec... (Lawrence, KS) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Isn't PEAR just a bunch of packages you can install?" That's the question you'll receive most of the time if you ask a PHP developer if his software can be installed through the PEAR Installer. There's been a lot of work happening in PEAR that's culminated most recently in the PEAR elections and the announcement of Pyrus - PEAR 2. A major force behind all of these changes, including work on the PEAR Installer, is Greg Beaver. With this book, he can claim "he wrote the book on PEAR". Not that anyone could have disagreed with him before getting this book published. :-)

This past weekend I read through the PEAR Installer Manifesto. For anyone who's not familiar the PEAR installer and how it can be used in projects outside of PEAR, I would point them to this book. It's only six chapters long, but it walks through the ways to use the PEAR Installer to enhance your projects - large or small, open or closed source, free or pay. This book covers the basics of what the PEAR Installer is, how to use it to distribute your own packages, and explains how to deploy a website using the installer. The book closes out with the two chapters that make this book a must read to someone already familiar with the PEAR Installer, but not familiar with what it is capable of: a chapter on PEAR channels and one on embedding the PEAR installer.

A PEAR channel isn't a difficult thing to setup; there are blog posts aplenty on the topic. This chapter fill in the gaps in those posts answering the "why" to how things are done. I've setup my own channel before, but I hadn't investigated the internals to figure out exactly how everything ticked. Chapter 5 - Releasing to the World: PEAR Channels, fills in the gaps and gives you a thorough understanding of what makes a channel tick.

Chapter 6 - Embedding the PEAR Installer: Designing a Custom Plug-In System, discusses several methods of handling plug-in systems then demonstrates how to create one using the PEAR Installer as a base. This chapter really starts to show exactly how powerful the installer can be once you start to re-purpose it, making it more than the command line tool we all use to download and install code. Thinking of the possibilities this introduced, I actually got giddy. Yes, I know... I'm a geek.

This is a four star rating, so there were a few things that weren't exactly what I had hoped for. I hoped this would serve as a full reference to the installer. While this book takes you a lot of great jumping off points, it doesn't have the thoroughness I wanted. There are areas where the complexity of the code you're calling isn't covered in depth and you're left with a "this is all you'll need to know for this task" type comment. It took a visit to Greg's PEAR channel to fully understand how to package a custom file role. The book demonstrated the required PHP for the role and showed the custom XML, but didn't explicitly state that they were to be packaged together or how they were to be packaged. An appendix offering an in-depth overview of the code related to the installer would be a great addition to this book. With the recent news of Pyrus, that might be outdated before it could be ready though.

I would have liked to have seen a more in-depth comparison to competing methods of building/packaging software. Instead, the only alternative that is discussed at any length is "unzip and go". It would have been interesting to see the comparison of the PEAR Installer to a traditional build system - such as PHP's phing or Java's Ant - and to explore using the installer inside a phing/Ant environment and how they could compliment each other. For example, using phing to handle the build process, while using PEAR channels and the installer to handle distribution and installation.

This book is definitely worth the read for anyone interested in the PEAR Installer and understanding what it is capable of. The absence of a full reference to the installer code and no mention of viable alternatives to handle packaging are the only things that kept me from rating this book at 5 stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Must Have' for anyone who developes distributed PHP applications., December 14, 2006

By	Brett Bieber "saltybeagle" (Lincoln, NE USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I recently finished a book on the PEAR installer written by Greg Beaver. The book itself is an excellent read for anyone who develops installable PHP libraries or applications, and one I would highly recommend for anyone interested in building small to large PHP web applications.

Throughout the book, Greg demonstrates the complex features of the PEAR installer and package description file (package.xml) to guide you through understanding methods of distributing, installing, and maintaining PHP (and other) projects. The book is filled with real world examples and working applications from the guy who (seriously) 'wrote the book' on the PEAR installer.

To anyone who is building distributed PHP applications or reusable libraries, this book is a must have for understanding release deployment strategies and how they are managed with powerful ease. The author knows his stuff, and has used every one of the examples within real word applications. The book has everything from "Hello World" installable applications to a full blown source code repository and distribution system through PEAR channels.
With the book you will have all of the necessary information to build and maintain your complex PHP applications and easily distribute them across many servers, clients, or the open source community.

If you're at the point in your application development where the unzip-and-go distribution method has reached its limit (typically the first bug after the first zip), the time has come to start building installable PEAR packages and to take advantage of all the capabilities the PEAR installer offers.

Despite maintaining my own PEAR channel server (...........) for over a year now, I still found plenty of information to continue the ease with which the PEAR installer offers. So even if you are an experienced PEAR developer, the book is still a good read and shelf reference.

I highly recommend the book, check it out.