PEAR version 1.4.9 released

The latest stable release of the PEAR installer, version 1.4.9, has been released at pear.php.net. This release addresses a critical bug introduced in the release of PEAR 1.4.8 earlier this month. This version has been rigorously tested to ensure no future breakage (the last release had inordinate time pressure due to external circumstances). You can read about it and retrieve it at http://pear.php.net/PEAR.

Also, development has begun on PEAR version 1.5.0. This will not be a earth-shattering feature addition from the 1.4.x series like version 1.4.0 was to the 1.3.x series of releases. In fact, most new features have already been implemented. First of all, support for PHP 4.2.x will be officially dropped in version 1.5.0, and we will use version 4.3.0 as the minimum version. Several cosmetic features have been introduced, such as improved post-installation scripts for the CLI interface, and TAP-compliant output of the run-tests command. The most major area for improvement will be the way PECL extensions are installed. We will announce specifics when the implementation is worked out, so stay tuned to the pear-core mailing list for details.