A quick note about an obscure problem peculiar to PHP files that make use of PHP 5's new __HALT_COMPILER(); token. Prior to PHP 5.2.2, if you included two files that contained the __HALT_COMPILER(); token, you would get a notice that __COMPILER_HALT_OFFSET__ was already defined.
This posed a rather large problem for the phar file format, which makes use of __HALT_COMPILER();. Essentially, this eliminated any possibility of using phar as a library format.
However, never fear, your trusty Greg is here!
With this patch to PHP 5 and this patch to PHP 6, the problem is eliminated. This patch will also affect applications like PHK that utilize the same principle. Most of you won't notice the difference until Pyrus, the next generation of the PEAR Installer, is released. 