On his blog today, Stefan Mischook compares two of the popular component libraries out there - PEAR and the Zend Framework (yes, it can be considered a grouping of components too).

Now that the Zend Framework is ready for 'prime time', I've been considering the Pear framework with regards to how it now fits in the PHP world.

He suggests that not could both be considered component libraries, but might also both be frameworks (based on a definition that a framework is a "consistent set of components that are designed to work together in a unified manner"). He also asks about the need for something like PEAR now that the Zend Framework has come along, getting Jonathan Lebensold's opinion too.

Piggybacking on a recent proposal for traits in PHP, Lukas Smith has suggested something that could help make the organization of these sorts of contributions (and their "staying power") a bit more likely to happen - an official PHP.net wiki of sorts.

As such I really like what Stefan has done with his Traits proposal. Very nicely done. [...] Right now the RFC documents are hidden away in the unwieldy mailinglist archive and Stefan's private homepage, which could disappear any day. Of course there are also the various web archives, but what would be nice to have is a PHP.net wiki.

He notes that not only would this help protect information like this from dropping off the face of the web but it might also pave the way for some other changes to be made to the language (and to provide a space where everyone can share their ideas). He specifically mentions his wants for an array_merge_replace and a change to file_exists.