Greg Beaver has a new note over on his blog today about a very interesting idea that I agree could help the PHP community with its adoption of PEAR - self-installing PEAR from a single file.

I've been toying with an idea for quite a while now that I think has some real potential.

As many have noted, the most difficult step in getting PEAR is in fact installing the darn thing. Now, there are several options, but all of them require a command-line. With a combination of Davey Shafik's PHP_Archive package and PEAR 1.4.0's bundle package.xml type, I think it is possible to distribute PEAR as a single file that you could literally double-click to run and install.

With the somewhat limited adoption of the PEAR libraries, I think something like this could really provide a simple, easy-to-promote way to get PEAR's foot in the door with a lot of developers. That combined with some of the new efforts that are underway to get the PEAR archives cleaned up and more standardized has the potential to breathe new life into this woefully underused resource...