The ServerGrove blog has posted an introduction to the PHAR format, a built-in method to use PHP and create self-contained functional scripts as a single *.phar file making it much easier to transport.

In the last years there is a trend in the PHP community to release tools, especially command line utilities, as PHAR files, so you can package an entire PHP application into a single file for convenience. But, how PHAR files work? In this post we will try to explain it.

They cover a few of the basic topics first: what is a PHAR file and a few examples of them being provided by major PHP projects. They then get into the creation of an archive, showing how to make a super simple PHAR "Hello World" archive, created with just a bit of PHP. They then get into the structure behind the archive and get into detail on each section (stub, manifest, file contents and signature).