In this new post to the SitePoint PHP blog Troels Knak-Nielsen looking at a new PHP-centric service for creating a resource like the Ruby on Rails "gems" but for PHP software - pearhub.org.

I think services like these are an important reason why gems are so popular amongst Ruby developers, and I figured that PHP really needs something similar. So over the Christmas, I have been brewing on a service, which is now stable enough that I'll make it available to the community at large. pearhub.org provides a place where you can register a project, that is hosted on Github, Google code or similar (Currently only git and subversion is supported). The service will generate a PEAR package and put it on a PEAR channel.

PEAR channels have been difficult to set up in the past but the pearhub.org service makes it simple and you get the added benefit of being able to use the PEAR installer application to do installations and upgrades. You can find out more about the service on their FAQ.

Fabien Potencier has written up a post detailing a PEAR channel server manager he's developed, Pirum.

Pirum lets you setup PEAR channel servers in a matter of minutes. Pirum is best suited when you want to create small PEAR channels for a few packages written by a few developers. Pirum consists of just one file, a command line tool, written in PHP. There is no external dependencies, no not need for a database, no need to setup credentials, and nothing need to be installed or configured.

All you need to do to get the tool is download the pirum file and go. It includes features like per-channel HTML pages and Atmos feed release tracking along with several other standard PEAR channel features.

There's already been one project that's made the swtich - PHP_Depend.

The PHPWomen group has announced an new channel on the Freenode IRC network to compliment their already existing #phpwomen channel - and this one's just for the ladies.

Our existing channel #phpwomen remains open to all but we're adding a little space for the women to get together without the men if they want to. This channel has a password - pop in to #phpwomen on freenode, introduce yourself and request access details if you want to join in!

If you've never gotten in on IRC but want to find out more about it (and connecting to the Freenode network) check out the About section on the Freenode website. Come join in the discussion on both this new channel and on the current everyone's-invited #phpwomen channel!

On his blog today Sameer looks at a method for finding duplicate code in your applications with the help of PHPCPD.

Duplicated code in projects is a frequent thing and also the one ripe for factoring out in a new class or function. Cut/Paste coding is a common development practice among programmers, a lot of which can lead to code size increase and maintenance nightmares. PHPCPD (php copy paste detector) is a PEAR tool that makes it easier to detect duplicate code in php projects. Below is a short tutorial on the PHPCPD package.

You can either install the tool via a PEAR channel or directly from the github site. Once its downloaded and extracted you can immediately run it on the subdirectory of your choice. He also includes a more extended example - a search on a minimum of 5 lines of 70 tokens found to trip the filter in finding cloned functionality.

Ralph Schinder has posted about a new development in the world of Zend Framwork distribution - a PEAR channel.

For the past few months, the ZF team has been playing with the idea of releasing ZF from a PEAR channel. Over the past 2 years, we have seen a few channels distributing ZF that have pop up here and there.. so that lead us to believe there is an itch that needs scratching. The compelling reason against a PEAR channel is that, with ZF, there is nothing to "install". Just pop ZF in your include_path and off you go.

With the introduction of the next release (1.8) and the Zend_Tool component that comes with it, the framework is graduating from a "component library" into a more holistic framework with a more advanced distribution system. For those interested, he also includes the details of the channel (from pear.zfcampus.org) and the organizational plan of how the channel is laid out.

On the GitHub Support forums Kastner has proposed an idea - making something similar to gethub gems but for PHP:

Just like ruby/gems, PHP has a packaging/distribution system called PEAR. I think that running a pear channel would help the PHP community with things like GPL extensions, as well as increasing participation in the community. Thoughts?

There's already thirteen comments on the post, all supportive of the idea including interest from the GitHub folks themselves.

Cassandra Clark (from the Sun Developer's Network) has passed along a note that a podcast from one of the members of the PHP Women group has been posted - an interview with Lorna Mitchell.

A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of meeting Lorna Mitchell, at ZendCon in Santa Clara, California. We first met at the Sun booth (yes, Sun has products to support PHP). We struck up a brief conversation as I tried to get her to join the Sun Developer Network. I learned she belonged to PHPWomen.org which is a very influential group in the PHP community. [...] In this podcast, you'll learn more about Lorna herself and the PHPWomen.org. Please enjoy and stay tuned as I will try to have more members of this group in to talk with me.

You can grab the mp3 directly from the SDN Channel website.

Amir Saied recently posted a handy little tool for the PEAR users out there - a bash script that handles tab completion for you.

Lately I've been playing alot with the PEAR CLI. The one annoying thing I noticed the most was its lack of tab completion that I'm used to from the shell. It turns out that this feature is very easy to add, in the bash at least.

It will finish off the PEAR commands for you and expand out the PEAR package names and discovered channels when it finds a match. You can download the package here.

The Symfony project is recommending you upgrade your plugins to the latest editions - an issue with the PEAR channel caused it to load the wrong ones:

A problem in the symfony project PEAR channel made the plugin-install task always install the oldest version of the plugins, instead of the latest. If you recently installed plugins with the symfony command line, you probably installed an outdated version. Plugins installed via SVN are not affected.

You'll need to run a plugin-upgrade command for each of the plugins installed on your system to ensure that you're completely up to date. The post has complete info on how to tell which plugins you have and the exact commands to issue to being them up to date.

Travis Swicegood has made a new release of the successor to the PEAR RunTest package for PEAR2 - the new PHPT.

Since this is usable and PEAR2 is still being worked out, I've decided to release this as a standalone package for the time being with the intent of bundling it with Pyrus or including it directly in PEAR2 when PEAR2 is realized.

This provides the majority of the functionality provided by PEAR's pear run-tests command via its own phpt command and it can even provide pear style output.

Examples of its use are included as well as the method to download this latest version (via a PEAR channel, of course) or through the package's web page. Issues found with the software can be posted to the project's Google code page.