From Helgi's weblog today, he has a few suggetions for the PEAR project when it comes to the use of a "source version control" system for their resources.

Until now the PEAR project hasn't required developers to use a SVC for their code (CVS, SVN and etc.) which has led to couple of problems and short comings for us, for example, maintainers just disappear and we are left only with the code in a .tgz form, possibly a very outdated version ... HDD crashes (at the developers computer) and the most recent code that hasn't been released is just poof gone ... We have a difficult time monitoring the development that could led to spotting problems sooner and also we have a harder time running automate QA tasks.

This issue was discussed a bit on pear-dev and everyone seemed to agree that requiring people to use SVC isn't too much to ask.

He looks at some of the plusses of all of the PEAR developers being allowed to use something like CVS to manage their projects/libraries. Some of the benefits mentioned include: simpler project management/tracking, easier transitions between developers (should one loose interest), and an overall better quality of availibility for the packages in the repository.