eZ components is the latest project of ez.no, as the stable 1.0 release is expected in December 2005.

eZ components is an enterprise ready general purpose PHP platform. As a collection of high quality independent building blocks for PHP application development eZ components will both speed up development and reduce risks. An application can use one or more components effortlessly as they all adhere to the same naming conventions and follow the same structure. All components are based on PHP 5.1, except for the ones that require the new Unicode support that will be available from PHP 6 on.

One of the recommandation to use ezComponents is to use the PEAR installer. And for an enterprise ready PHP plateform, I think that the choice of PEAR installer to install this package is certainly a result of the great features that the PEAR installer offer until today.

Installing the eZ components with the help of the PEAR Installer is highly recommended, as it is the most convenient and safest way. The given instructions serve as guidelines on a Linux system, but are also useful for those who run PHP on Windows, of course they just need to adjust the paths accordingly.

Even if I still think that the PEAR installer still need lot of enhancements, but its already one of the great features of PEAR. But, can PEAR offer more than an installer ? It is already doing and the number of PEAR project is really big, but in addition to this big number I think it is important to focus more on a collaborative development.

PEAR is based on personal contributions, everyday a developer have a new idea he add it, proposal and the normal process to add a new package until it join the PEAR Family. But why the guidlines don’t care about what PEAR really need ? Inspite of having many PEAR database abstraction, it would be better to have a more extensible project.

There is more than 170 packages today in the PEAR project, more package won’t make PEAR bigger, but more organisation will do. I think this is the great features that the PEAR project need : Strategy and Development team, Marketing team and a quality assurance team.

The strategy and development team assure the guidlines for the project that PEAR need to be implemented or improved. Marketing team to promote the pear project with articles, feedback … etc. and the quality assurance team to assure the quality of the development inside the PEAR project.