With all of the buzz surrounding PEAR these days, Paul Jones has a new posting on his blog today with a mention of an alternative (Solar), and what the difference really is.

Regarding the latest release of Solar, Atrus asked: "How is this significantly different from PEAR?" It's a good question. Let me outline some of what I think are the major differences.

• Solar is built from the ground up for E_STRICT compliance in PHP5, which makes it incompatible with PHP4.
• Solar is very much like PEAR in concept, however, it differs from PEAR in execution of that concept
• Solar is quite different from PEAR in that it is also a framework.
• Solar provides mid-level independent application components out of the box (these are called Solar Cells).
• Solar comes with useful applications out-of-the-box (a bug tracker and a del.icio.us-like bookmark system) with more on the way, such as blog and wiki.
• The communities are very different.
• PEAR has been in place for a few years now, and Solar is very young (first release was only 2 months ago).

It's interesting to see another take on the plugin model for PHP - I'll be keeping an eye on this one for the future...