I don't think anyone is arguing that literally no one is using PEAR packages, but looking at the ~6 months old archive.org mirror of http://pear.php.net/package-stats.php (available at https://web.archive.org/web/20160315083551/http://pear.php.net/package-stats.php), the largest package, PEAR itself only has around 800,000 downloads, and the fifth largest package, XML_RPC only has around 10,000 downloads.
This can be compared with Packagist, where the most popular package (psr/log) had approximatly 12,000,000 downloads during the last 6 months, and the fifth most popular package (symfony/yaml) had approximately 10,000,000 downloads. PEAR isn't dead, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's moribund. On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 10:40 AM, Tony Marston <tonymars...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Sent: Monday, September 12, 2016 12:34 PM > >To: Tony Marston > >Cc: Sherif Ramadan ; Stanislav Malyshev ; internals@lists.php.net > >Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with > composer/pickle > > > >On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Tony Marston <tonymars...@hotmail.com> > wrote: > > > >Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2016 11:44 AM > >>To: Tony Marston > >>Cc: Stanislav Malyshev ; internals@lists.php.net > >>Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with > composer/pickle > >> > >>On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 4:47 AM, Tony Marston <tonymars...@hotmail.com> > wrote: > >> > >>Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2016 7:47 PM > >>>To: Tony Marston ; internals@lists.php.net > >>>Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PEAR/PECL & Replace with > composer/pickle > >> > >>Then I suggest that those who are so anxious to see of death of > PEAR/PECL should be forced to provide a viable alternative first. Otherwise > they would be just like those stupid politicians who try to force commuters > out of their private cars and into public transport without realising that > the existing public transport system is NOT a viable replacement and is > incapable of taking on the extra load. > >> > >>I just want to say that PEAR as a source repository, has been dead for > quite some time. It's filled with outdated code that has hardly seen any > maintenance in years, and nobody really contributes to it anyway. > >> > >>PEAR/PECL as a package manager has historically had little utility to > the average user apart from installing those PECL extensions which aren't > packaged by a particular user's distribution repository. Certainly hasn't > had any real viability in years. Trying to replace something that's > inherently non-viable with a viable-alternative seems like a pretty moot > point. > > > >Just because you have found no use for it does not mean that others feel > the same. How about those large numbers of websites that have to use PEAR > Mailer instead of the built-in mail() function? I personally use SVNManager > to manage my SVN repositories, and this is dependent on one of the PEAR > modules, so there is a very recent use. How many other PEAR modules have > been installed and are still is use? Do you have the download statistics > for all the PEAR modules? That would be much more accurate that all this > guesswork and supposition. > > > >-- > >Tony Marston > > > >we have download statistics for pear/pecl: > >http://pecl.php.net/package-stats.php > >http://pear.php.net/package-stats.php > >but it would be better to filter the stats to a more recent time interval > like last year or something, not sure if that is possible with the current > web interface, but you can see the recent download stats on the package > page, eg: > >http://pecl.php.net/package-stats.php?cid=33&pid=876 > > > >http://pear.php.net/package-stats.php?pid=14&cid=19 > > > > Those download stats STILL show multiple downloads for multiple packages > in 2016, so that puts paid to the idea that nobody uses it. Those who keep > saying “none of the people I know use it” inhabit tiny groups who are *NOT* > indicative of the entire PHP ecosystem. > > -- > Tony Marston > >
