alter the installed base of PEAR and PECL extensions. On PHP installations running on Linux, the PEAR package manager is ready for usage by default, but on Windows the PEAR package manager is only available after running a batch file called go-pear.bat. PEAR2 Pyrus With Pyrus an attempt was undertaken to redesign and improve PEAR from the ground up for PHP 5.3 or newer. Pyrus can be used to install packages from PEAR channels. The last release is from March 2011 and its development might have been discontinued due to the popularity of Composer. PEAR and Composer With Composer there is an alternative available for managing packages for a PHP project. Composer also supports the installation of PEAR packages. Some people of the PHP community argue for replacing PEAR in favor of composer. PECL The PHP Extension Community Library (PECL), (pronounced 'pickle') is conceptually very similar to PEAR, and indeed PECL modules are installed with the PEAR Package Manager. PECL contains C extensions for compiling into PHP. As C programs, PECL extensions run more efficiently than PEAR packages. PECL includes modules for XML-parsing, access to additional databases, mail-parsing, embedding Perl or Python in PHP scripts and for compiling PHP scripts. PECL spun off from the PEAR Project in October 2003. Originally it was called the PEAR Extension Code Library, but it now operates independently of PEAR. PECL extensions are documented alongside standard extensions within the PHP Manual, so there is no special manual for PECL extensions. Also, several extensions began their development cycle in PECL and ended up in core (the distributed PHP source) and in many of these cases the PECL versions become unmaintained. See also Composer (software) References External links The PEAR Project The PECL Project PHP software Web frameworks Archive networks Free package management systems