What is PEAR most appropriately used for

I can't wrap my head around PEAR or its usages. There is also some talk about its maintainability, so I think a better way to help me gauge what sub-components of my programs I could need it for is to ask what others have used it for. What did you use PEAR for and it was a good choice? and what did you consider using it for but eventually settled on something else and why? I'm looking for specific examples please like "I had an error reporting page that sent开发者_开发技巧 mail and was considering using PEAR::Mail" or something like that.

Thank you all.

"PEAR" isn't something in and of itself, it is a repository of a bunch of different extensions that other people have written.

If you need some basic authentication in your PHP application, go to http://pear.php.net/ and search for authentication. Now you have a list of plugins you can use to get the desired outcome.

There's a plugin for mostly anything you could need to do. PEAR isn't either good or bad, each plugin inside the repository is good or bad, so it's up to you to see if the plugin works well for you.

January 2018 Edit

Since the writing of this answer, Composer has become the de facto package management solution for PHP. I recommend you try to find a relevant package via Composer before looking at Pear for solutions.

PEAR is not a monolithic thing. It's not a framework or single package. At its most basic level, PEAR is just a repository for modules, much like Perl's CPAN (although it has become something of a more cohesive system than CPAN at this point).

Evaluate each extension on its own merits for solving the problems that you need to solve.

PEAR is both a repository of packages and a framework for installing and maintaining them, but it's worth noting that you can download and use the packages from the browser (ie without using PEAR), and I think this is how most people access it.