When I said PEAR I referred to the pear.php.net packages being PHP4 style and dependent on PEAR_Error and all. I am aware of the fact that Symfony and a couple

When I said PEAR I referred to the pear.php.net packages being PHP4 style and dependent on PEAR_Error and all. I am aware of the fact that Symfony and a couple of other large projects are available via PEAR distribution servers. Haven't seen pear2.php.net before though but after a quick look just now - with just a couple of libs and hardly any updates in 2011, it doesn't look like it's doing very well. And again it seems to have dependencies and wants you to use custom error libraries. And I am not sure what you mean to say regarding most code being jailed and this being a 'misconception'. If you aren't on PHP 5.3, you can't even find a lightweight (means not Doctrine) working standalone implementation of ActiveRecord, although lots of frameworks provide similar functionality. Just one example. And looking at the other comments here I don't seem to be the only one who noticed this. And it's not that I am not seeing what's going on. I see that Symfony2 is making an effort but haven't worked with it yet. But I also see that I am watching 50+ repos of 'promising' more or less under-the-radar PHP 5.3 projects on github to prevent 'missing out' on something I could use in an upcoming project. Just saying that it'd be great if someone steps up and manages to establish something like rubygems in the PHP world, most likely for PHP 5.3 and up, maybe based on phar but with emphasis on loose coupling, reusability and keeping things 'compact'. I don't have the perfect solution either, all up for discussion.