PEAR Group Meeting 16th August 2009

1. New PEAR group members training: how to apply karma, when to act, etc, quick refresher of what's expected
2. Review of open, unresolved action items from previous pear group
3. PEAR test server - discussion, look at its role in the future of PEAR (doconnor, cweiske)
4. PEAR new developers - how do we attract them? (doconnor)
   1. SVN - what does it mean for new developers?
5. Set goals for group for 2009 to 2010 (short, middle and long term)
6. PEAR2, deployment, marketing, etc plans. (doconnor is curious about, anyone else who wants to contribute!)
7. New developers (action: get to know these guys!)
   • mrook (VersionControl_SVN, other packages).
   • cschmitz, progi1984 (Spreadsheet_Writer_Excel)
   • Miguel (HTML_Safe)

• Brett Bieber (saltybeagle)
• Mike Gauthier (gauthierm)
• Daniel O'Connor (doconnor)
• Chuck Burgess (ashnazg)
• Bill Shupp (shupp)
• Ken Guest (radagast)

Brett called meeting to order shortly after 15:00 UTC.
Bill logged meeting on IRC for absent members.
Mike compiled minutes.
Daniel had to leave after the first half-hour due to it being 3:00 AM in his time zone.

• The group welcomed new members for 2009-2010.
• New group members were introduced to their responsibilities
  • Granting website karma was explained
  • pear.dev, pear.pecl, pear.bugs were explained
  • The process for getting SVN accounts for new developers was explained and how to grant SVN karma was explained.
    • #php.pecl, Derick
    • when granting karma, always diff before commit, always write a good commit message
  • PEAR Group responsibilities page on the wiki was linked.

• Christian was elected PEAR Vice President for 2009-2010 in-absentia
• votes were +6, 0, 0

• Short term
  • getting outstanding RFC's ratified and voted on
• Mid term
  • stable PEAR2/Pyrus release
  • attracting new developers to PEAR2
• Long term
  • get active maintainers of quality PEAR1 packages to port them to PEAR2

• Three outstanding RFC's are awaiting Group voting
  • naming standards, class naming, exception policy
• One new RFC is awaiting a vote
  • version standards for PEAR2
• PEAR2 policy and standards RFC's need to be re-affirmed
  • it was decided to address these RFC's first as they are non-controversial and straightforward.
• Action Items
  • New group members will catch up on content of RFC's before next meeting and will be ready to discuss or present changes.
  • Group will vote on PEAR2 policy and standards RFC's at beginning of next meeting.
  • Other RFC's will be discussed in detail during next meeting.

• agenda item was mostly skipped as Christian and Daniel are not present
• QA needs to be emphasized for PEAR
• phpUnderControl is planned for sg1 for testing with multiple PHP versions

• Community outreach via blogs, social networks, etc was suggested
  • PEAR needs mention on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Group members' blogs should be on Planet PHP
  • Group members should post PEAR-related posts to the shared PEAR blog.
    • this will include meeting minutes, vote outcomes, security notices, etc.
• The website was mentioned as a place where PEAR could improve its appearance to attract new developers. It was suggested that the website should include tutorials and screen-casts for new developers.
• The members of the PEAR group should all use Pyrus and promote

its use to other developers.

• High-quality packages with active developers will encourage other developers to use and contribute to PEAR.
• Being friendly, timely and helpful to new developers will help retain and attract new developers. Recent technical issues caused some slow turn-around recently, but these issues have since been fixed.
  • Being quick to respond to new accounts and karma requests is important.
• IRC support is being handled pretty well.
• Action items
  • Bill will look into wrangling control of the pear and pear2 Twitter accounts.
  • Bill will set up a Twitter account for pearphp
  • Bill will ask if Digg has any design resources to give for the PEAR Website.
  • David will make sure Group will be given accounts on the PEAR blog
  • Group members will start using Pyrus and tell their developer friends how cool it is.

• Brett and Greg (cellog) are the only two developers working on PEAR2--they may need some help.
  • website needs assistance in terms of development and design
• PEAR2 cannot launch until at least PHP 5.3.1, but the website and bug-tracking infrastructure likely won't be ready by then anyway.
• Marketing
  • Teaser posts on Pyrus features will increase interest in PEAR2.
  • Major marketing will be withheld until the stable launch of Pyrus.
• Bug Manager
  • a functioning bug tracker is needed before PEAR2 can launch
  • some PHP internals developers want a global bug tracker for all PHP projects
  • PEAR2 developers want to build a stand-alone bug tracking package that could be used for PEAR2 and for other projects. (Bug Manager)
  • either of these goals will take some time
• Action items
  • Bill will look into assisting Greg with the Bug Manager package
  • Christian will work on getting pearweb running on PHP 5.3.x to test the Bug Manager package with real-world data.

• 2009-09-06
• Action items
  • Brett will post to pear-group with a potential new time. Possibly 2-3 hours earlier as Bill doesn't mind early mornings and Daniel is 16.5 hours away.