From Greg Beaver today, there's a new post showing off an exciting new demonstration of the PHP_Archive package to install phpMyAdmin in one single .phar file.
But for now, I'm excited to have a unique demonstration of PHP_Archive's power. The file http://pear.chiaraquartet.net/phpmyadmin.phar (Note: right-click and save) is a single-file bundling of the popular phpMyAdmin application. The only thing it needs to function properly is a config.inc.php file. A template file is auto-generated on the first time it is run.
He gives a bit more instruction on how to get it all set up, but it's a very cool example of the power of this little package. There's a few bugs Greg mentions that he and Davey Shafik have been looking into, but no major issues.