From this new post on Pixelated-Dreams.com today:

As Greg notes, the first public release of PHP_Archive, the code allowing PHAR (think, JAR) abilities in PHP.

I want to just be sure people understand this, the Kudos is most definately Gregs. I came up with the original idea (special TAR files) and some semi-working code. I got it accepted into PEAR. Unfortunately, I was beaten by the compression issue and pretty much put it on the back burner.

Greg has taken what I started and taken it to where I wanted, the abitlity to create and use single file applications, with compression.

For those that aren't familiar with the PHP_Archive package it has been playing a major part in the "single file PEAR install" script that Greg has been working on for some time (see here, here, and here). Using it is just as simple as any other PHP functionality - you include_once the .phar file then use the phar:// stream wrapper to access the files within. Great work on this all! This is a hug step forward for PHP (and PEAR)!