When I'm coding and hit some need like CSRF protection, I think, "I need a library to do CSRF protection," not, "I need to switch to a framework that includes CSRF protection."
Unfortunately, there's not a good mechanism like RubyGems for distributing/discovering PHP libraries. PEAR isn't it. It has too much stuff that's either unmaintained or dangerously unstable. I don't know what happened there. Maybe the coding standards and general bureaucracy involved in creating PEAR packages drove out innovation.
I haven't had a serious look around the PEAR libraries in ages, mainly because I don't want to have classes like their own 'Error' class around in my code at all.
Regarding distribution I was hoping that .phar files would become the new standard but I haven't seen a single .phar file around. Definitely agree that a central place to discover libraries is really needed as well.
When I'm coding and hit some need like CSRF protection, I think, "I need a library to do CSRF protection," not, "I need to switch to a framework that includes CSRF protection."
Unfortunately, there's not a good mechanism like RubyGems for distributing/discovering PHP libraries. PEAR isn't it. It has too much stuff that's either unmaintained or dangerously unstable. I don't know what happened there. Maybe the coding standards and general bureaucracy involved in creating PEAR packages drove out innovation.