Greg Beaver has posted a formal press release over on his blog today for the latest version of the PEAR base libraries - version 1.4.0.

As of Sunday, September 18, 2005, the PEAR installer has reached maturity as an enterprise-level installation tool for PHP code. The release of version 1.4.0 stable ushers in several essential features for management of PHP extensions and packages.

[...] PEAR (http://pear.php.net) is the official code repository of the PHP project (http://www.php.net). In addition to providing the PEAR installer, PEAR provides high-quality object-oriented libraries through pear.php.net, and PHP extensions through pecl.php.net.

He also mentions several of the improved features, including:

• PEAR channels
• Better handling of PECL extensions and dependencies on PECL packages
• and more than 650 regression tests in .phpt format

If you haven't given PEAR a look before, this is the perfect time to check it out - it's never been more flexible or more powerful!