PHP Extension authors - please join the PECL community

[Sorry for mass-mailing those of you who are not already subscribed to the pecl-dev list, but please read on and hopefully you will choose to subscribe anyway] We need to foster a greater sense of community for people writing PHP extensions, and I have been elected (by unanimous peer pressure!) to be "The King of PECL". Quite what this means hasn't been decided, although one of the major responsibilities is to spark up some community spirit, and that is the purpose of this email. I'm sending it out to all the php-extension projects that I can find to invite their participation here; if you know of anyone else developing php extensions, either for public consumption or even for their own internal purposes, please invite them also. For those of you that don't know, PECL is the PHP Extension Code Library. At least, that is the definition of the acronym. Traditionally, PECL was a part of PEAR (pear.php.net) and is strongly associated with semi official PHP extensions that aren't main-stream enough to get into the PHP distribution. It is also seen as a kind of Siberia for older, unmaintained extensions from the PHP core. These views need to be changed. My vision for PECL is as the PHP Extension *Community* Library. Anyone working on a PHP extension (for whatever purpose) is automatically a part of the community. Community membership entitles you to a number of free benefits: - Hosting your package downloads on the official PECL site. Useful if you don't have the bandwidth or other resources to make your extension available. - Hosting your source code in the official PECL CVS. Very useful if other people would like to help you with your work. Automated testing and (win32) binary generation - if you use our standard "PHP test" files, we can periodically run the test suite and post the results online - this will help increase the quality of your extension. In addition, the PHP snapshot generator can build windows binaries for you automatically (if you have a windows project file that is!). - An open packaging and delivery mechanism and tools so that the end-user can easily download and install your extension. The installation tool is/will be a part of the standard PHP distribution and can download and install your package from the internet. Your package doesn't have to be hosted on the official PECL site for this to work. - Access to the PECL developer mailing list and archives. An essential resource for people having trouble creating their extensions, people interested in the packaging infrastructure and for general announcements affecting extension developers. - "Advertise" your extension on the PECL site. Just coded a new extension? Or released the latest, greatest version of your existing extension? Let the masses know about it through the PECL site. You don't have to use any of these things, and don't have to be tied into the PHP facilities either. That's the vision. What we need now is to make it real - not all of the above facilities are in place, and some need a bit of juggling around behind the scenes to get things perfected. There are other issues to discuss such as: - Code quality and what to do with older un-maintained extensions The PHP QA team would like to "enforce" some quality on code hosted in the PECL CVS. While we won't be going so far as to require rigid conformity, we will certainly encourage people to use the PHP coding standards in their hosted projects, as it helps others to help you maintain your code. - Can *anyone* host their project in PECL? Sure. The only proviso is that the project is useful for something. If you already have karma, just go ahead and commit it. If you don't, or you don't have a CVS account, you need to apply for one. This requires intervention from "big brother" - he is generally a nice guy, but might decide not to allow your project if there is a valid reason for that. Of course, your project must be under some kind of OpenSource license, since the hosting facilities are open to public scrutiny. If you aspire to have your extension bundled with the main PHP distribution, your code must be released with a PHP-"compatible" license. OK, this email is long enough. Please make yourselves known on the pecl-dev mailing list if you are interested in participating in our community - We're looking forward to hearing from you. --Wez Furlong wez@php.net Author of a bunch of extensions and a php core hacker To subscribe to the PECL developers mailing list, send email to: pecl-dev-subscribe@lists.php.net