In this chapter we describe the cases in which it makes sense to
contribute code to PEAR and in which it does not. This description
is by no means complete. If you are unsure, if your contribution
could be included into PEAR, contact the developers mailing list.
As you may have already noticed while browsing the list of
existing packages,
the PEAR packages provide a (often abstract) solution for a general
problem. Thus your code will most likely fit into PEAR if it
solves a problem that will not only occur in one (e.g. your)
specific application, but that occurs in a lot of (web)
applications. Examples are:
Support for Network protocols
Object oriented wrappers that provide easy access to otherwise
complicated or less intuitive PHP extensions.
Parsing different XML dialects.
The PEAR packages that provide XML parsing functionalities can be
found in the category
browser.
No matter which area is covered by a package, the
API should be as abstract as possible (while not
becoming too complex), so that it can be utilized painlessly in as
much use cases as possible.
