If you've ever wondered why it's so difficult to get PHP code from lots of different people working together, you're not alone. There have always been problems with meshing code from different sources. Well, there's one project that aims to make components that could alleviate these headaches - PCOM: PHP Component Model.

The goal of this project is to develop a standard for the development of exchangable components that can be customized and plugged together using PHP Development Environments (PHP IDEs). Quoting Philippe Krutchen from Rational Software: "A component is a nontrival, nearly independent, and replaceable part of a system that fulfills a clear function in the context of a well-defined architecture. A component conforms to and provides the physical realization of a set of interfaces."

These would basically be PHP classes, organized from one source, built to adhere to certain coding standards, and registers itself with the component container, allowing the coder to use it. PHPEverywhere also brings up some good points about the common set of services that everyone will use. I'll be interested to follow this project and see what happens...