So if you are wondering about use cases, the PEAR installer is a good example. Generally I would say phar lends itself for self installing
Let's separate phar as installer format and phar as runtime format. Only problem I have with the former is that it's custom NIH-syndrome-enabled format which no tools except PEAR can work with. I don't have any problem with the idea of having distribution format inside PHP toolkit or the intent of the project, on the contrary - I think it's a great think that should be taken even further - probably up to something like InstallShield.php ;) As for phar in runtime I think moving away from filesystem would create more problems than solve. Of course, there are people that think the opposite.
Also it is one of those cases of "build it and they will come". So once we put this into core, people will take notice, tools will be developed, others will be adapted to become compatible etc.
We don't need phar extension in the core to make phar installer, as far as I understand.
-- Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Products Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zend.com/ -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
