If you missed out on the Future of PEAR/Pyrus webcast event put on by Engine Yard, you're in luck - they've posted a recording of the event.

In this panel discussion, we tackle topics including the direction PEAR and Pyrus will be going in the next few years, obstacles that may be on the horizon, and more.

PEAR is the package library of standardized packages for a variety of common development tasks. Pyrus is a new package manager to make installing and maintaining PEAR packages simpler. Engine Yard's next webcast will cover the Lithium framework with core contributors Nate Abele, Garrett Woodworth, and John Anderson on December 1st.

EngineYard, a company that recently merged with the PHP platform as a service provider Orchestra.io, has a new live panel podcast about the Future of PHP, specifically involving PEAR and Pyrus.

If you are a PHP developer using PEAR and Pyrus, we invite you to join us this week as we explore the future of PEAR and Pyrus. We'll be discussing issues such as where PEAR/Pyrus will be going in the next few years, what obstacles may be on the horizon, and how they're going to get where they're going.

The live panel, hosted by Elizabeth Naramore, will include experts from the two projects: David Coallier (President), Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson, Brett Bieber, and Till Klampäckel. There's still time to sign up to attend - the show happens on November 17th. To put your name in to be a part of the event, fill in the info here and you'll be sent more information about attending.

Christian Weiske has a new post to his blog today on how to get PHP extensions installed for phpfarm, the tool that lets you switch between multiple PHP versions on the same machine.

When using several PHP installations with phpfarm, installing PHP extensions is not always easy - mostly because Pyrus is very strict about package files - and many of the packages in PECL unfortunately have invalid non-validating package.xmls.

The installation follows most of the normal process with one exception - you use the phpfarm phpize and point the configure to use the phpfarm ini configuration file then enable it as usual.

Padraic Brady has a new post to his blog asking you, the reader, for your suggestions on how to architect a distribution system for the PEAR2/Pyrus components.

With the idea of PEAR2 and Pyrus, I had hoped to see a renewal - the advancement of a PEAR architecture for the 21st Century. Instead, and this is just my opinion, PEAR2/Pyrus were a relatively simple iteration on a very old theme. [...] If the PEAR ecosystem has a failing, it is one of staggered evolution. Over time it has picked up additional features tacked on top of a base model.

He breaks up his thoughts on the future of PEAR2/Pyrus distribution into a few different topics - the issues he sees surrounding packaging (like static packaging definitions), suggestions for a dynamic channel aggregation system and overall usage of the PEAR system.

New on the Ibuildings techPortal today they've posted the latest DPCRadio episode as recorded at the Dutch PHP Conference 2010 - Helgi Thormar Thobjoernsson's talk "Plant Pyrus in your system - A guide to a plugin system".

One of the biggest parts of any plugin system is the part that deals with discovery, installation, upgrading, dependency handling, infrastructure and other equally boring things. An essential part of any plugin system yet everyone dreads writing it, and few actually take on the task of writing it. With Pyrus (the new PEAR installer) these tasks will not only be easy to do but also a joy. By embedding Pyrus in your application with its lavish new APIs you can use a tried and tested solution that hundred of thousands of people use every day on their command line, but you will be able to provide it right IN your tool,

You can listen to the episode in different ways - either via the in-page player or by downloading the mp3. If you'd like to listen to other great recordings from the conference you can also check out the full list of episodes.

Greg Beaver has posted an update one some of the things he's been working on in the realm of his projects - Pyrus, PEAR2 and code coverage for phpt-based tests.

In any case, now that work on ext/phar has shifted primarily to maintenance mode, and namespaces are finally ancient history, I've shifted all of my coding energy to getting Pyrus, PEAR's next-generation installer, ready to ship.

Pyrus is the PEAR installer as rewritten for the next major PHP release (5.3) and uses a lot of the new features it offers (including full archive support, SQLite 3, combined configuration files and several new developer-centric additions). He also includes a sample bit of code that he worked up to run code coverage reports against the PEAR packages. He includes links to three different examples of the report's output.

Greg Beaver talks about a big push that he's making towards PEAR2 by working hard on an integral piece of the puzzle - the Pyrus installer.

I'm churning out code to turn its installer, Pyrus, from vaporware into actual code. Along these lines, there has been significant progress. The code has been developed on PHP 5.2, but will most likely target PHP 5.3 with the introduction of namespaces. Pyrus completely revamps the way things are done.

Greg mentions some of the functionality the installer will use including XMLReader/XMLWriter, namespaces and bits of functionality from the Standard PHP Library (SPL). He's released what he's developed so far via a PEAR channel with no other dependencies.

New from the PEAR blog today is an announcement about the official released of the latest version of the PEAR installer - 1.6.0.

This release fixes a number of major regressions introduced in PEAR 1.5.2 that were not fixed in PEAR 1.5.3 or PEAR 1.5.4, and is recommended for immediate upgrade.

The march to Pyrus, the next generation installer for PEAR, and the repository of packages designed for Pyrus (PEAR2) continues. Maintenance on 1.x will continue to contain bug fixes and security fixes, but the pace of new features is going to slow considerably.

PEAR users can either download the latest package from the main PEAR site or just issue a "pear upgrade PEAR" command from their system to pull it down from the default PEAR channel.

The PEAR group, with some of the new leadership in place, has decided to start something that probably should have been in place long ago - the PEAR blog.

Joshua Eichorn notes:

We will be using it to make announcements and to ask the community for feedback. I think this is a big step towards making PEAR a more transparent project.

So far, the most interesting post is the latest one mentioning PEAR's new installer - Pyrus - a (currently pre-devel) installer that will handle the PHP5+ PEAR packages to come.