Chapter 23. Introduction

The debut of PEAR 1.4.0 is very exciting. This chapter documents all of the differences between PEAR 1.3.x and the new features introduced in PEAR 1.4.

The most significant change in PEAR 1.4 is the addition of channels, a simple and effective method of distributing application development. This change has driven most of the other changes to PEAR, and in fact full application support is a major goal of this release.

In addition to channels, support for customization of the install process has been seriously enhanced with the addition of three essential features for application development:

• Custom file installation roles in package.xml

• Custom file tasks in package.xml

• Post-installation scripts