The process of adding channels and installing from them isn't too bad, but it's still additional friction. You can't do "pear search foo" and hope to find what you're looking for. Moving system-to-system you have to re-add all those remote channels you depend on.
Moving to Github is a good move. Opening up some sort of "PEAR commons" where the requirements aren't as arduous as PEAR proper would go a long way.
When package dependencies are tracked explicitly there's a very natural, Page-rank like effect that pushes the best, most reliable packages to the forefront because everyone depends on them. Just look at npm's "most depended on" list: http://search.npmjs.org/ You can look at any package and see what other packages depend on it.
PEAR's curation process feels a lot like Yahoo's of old's curated link database. npm's feels a lot like Google's "anyone can publish, we'll track dependencies, the good stuff will surface".
Comments
The process of adding channels and installing from them isn't too bad, but it's still additional friction. You can't do "pear search foo" and hope to find what you're looking for. Moving system-to-system you have to re-add all those remote channels you depend on.
Moving to Github is a good move. Opening up some sort of "PEAR commons" where the requirements aren't as arduous as PEAR proper would go a long way.
When package dependencies are tracked explicitly there's a very natural, Page-rank like effect that pushes the best, most reliable packages to the forefront because everyone depends on them. Just look at npm's "most depended on" list: http://search.npmjs.org/ You can look at any package and see what other packages depend on it.
PEAR's curation process feels a lot like Yahoo's of old's curated link database. npm's feels a lot like Google's "anyone can publish, we'll track dependencies, the good stuff will surface".