PEAR 1.5.0 (out today) pushes the envelope

PEAR 1.5.0, released a little while ago, pushes the envelope for PEAR. This release can be downloaded at http://pear.php.net/get/PEAR-1.5.0.tgz, or installed with

pear upgrade PEAR

This release adds several interesting new features to PEAR, and provides a further stabilization of the code base. The most important change: as promised, PEAR now requires PHP 4.3.0 or newer to function.

This release adds a few small but important new features:

• package.xml 2.1 allows PECL zend extensions like xdebug to define themselves as such
• automatic enabling and disabling of pecl extensions in php.ini is now supported
• post-installation scripts are much more advanced in the CLI frontend
• deprecated packages are displayed as such by the installer
• TAP output is possible with the run-tests command

In addition, 46 bugs have been fixed since the last stable release, 1.4.11.

PEAR 1.5.0 maintains full backwards compatibility with PEAR 1.4.11 on every level, and only adds new features and greater stability of existing features, especially installation and uninstall with complex dependency trees. I highly recommend an upgrade.