title: Why are there no longer Windows binaries for PECL extensions like pecl_http?
body: <p>I'm working on a PHP project running on Windows and it would be so very handy to be able to use pecl_http rather than working with cURL and re-inventing the wheel in order to do all the cool stuff the pecl extension does like parsing headers and so forth.</p>
  
  <p>Everywhere I read (including the PHP site) is that the Windows binary for pecl_http is no longer packaged with any PHP installation. I can't find any explanation as to why not anywhere. Also, <a href="http://pecl4win.php.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://pecl4win.php.net/</a> has been down for ages and I can only assume that the pecl4win project is dead.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know the story about what happened and if there are any nice alternatives to pecl_http that I can run in a WIMP environment?</p>