Chapter 8. When to contribute (and when not to contribute)

Table of Contents
Cases in which it makes sense to contribute
Cases in which it does not make sense to contribute

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.

Cases in which it makes sense to contribute

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. (XXX: Add link here.)

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.