Skip to content
🚀 PHP 8.6 is coming — check out what's new
PHP News
Search
Accepted PHP 8.7

PEAR: Ending PHP's Official Endorsement

On the PHP wiki as End PEAR Project Endorsement

Ends the PHP project's official endorsement of PEAR as a component framework and distribution system.

Stop endorsing PEAR?

Primary vote · 2/3 majority

40 Yes 0 No 100% approval

This poll has closed.

Nick Sdot opened the vote on October 5, 2026, on one question: "Stop endorsing PEAR?" Voting closed on October 19 with 40 votes for, none against and no abstentions. The RFC needed a two-thirds majority, and it passed unanimously.

Summary

PEAR is an old system for sharing and installing PHP code, and for a long time PHP pointed people to it. This RFC from Nick Sdot says it's time to stop, and internals agreed 40–0. PHP will no longer ship PEAR, and its official websites will stop recommending it.

Why change it

The PEAR website lives at pear.php.net, but the PHP team doesn't have access to it, so they can't fix it or keep it secure. The site has broken links, a search that doesn't work, and spam such as casino links.

Most of PEAR has also gone quiet. Of its 603 packages, 534 are marked as unmaintained, and 63 of the remaining 69 haven't been updated in a long time. The PEAR mailing lists have gone quiet too.

People tried to end PEAR's official role before, in 2016 and 2025, but neither RFC reached a vote. This one has support the others didn't: Chuck Burgess, who has helped run PEAR for years, has come out in favor of it.

What the RFC does

There are four steps:

  • Archive the website. Package pages, downloads, manuals and bug reports stay online as a read-only copy. The pear command line tool keeps working against it until December 31, 2027, and after that you can still download the whole archive.
  • Stop shipping PEAR with PHP. Starting in PHP 8.7, PHP won't install the PEAR installer for you.
  • Point people to Composer. Official PHP websites drop their PEAR links and name Composer as the package manager most developers use, though Composer still isn't run by the PHP project.
  • Close the mailing lists. The PEAR lists move to the "Inactive Lists" section, where you can still read them.

The RFC doesn't shut PEAR down. If a team wants to keep PEAR going, they can run it on their own website.

What it means for your code

Most applications won't notice. If you still use PEAR, you can install it yourself. Only 6 packages still publish on PEAR, and each one has a version you can install with Composer, so if you depend on one of them, switch to the Composer version.

Our coverage