title: What is the difference between PEAR and PEAR2?
body: <p>So there is the old pear installer and pyrus which is the new package manager for PEAR ... or was it PEAR2 ... at least it's faster and stuff.</p>
  
  <p>And there is the old package.xml version &lt;2.0 and the new package.xml >=2.0 ... is that version related to the package manager ... the pear installer or pyrus?</p>
  
  <p>And what is PEAR2 actually? Why is there <a href="http://pear2.php.net/" rel="noreferrer">http://pear2.php.net/</a> and there is a version-agnostic 'PEAR' all over the site? Is it actually the same?</p>
  
  <p>Could someone please explain to me how PEAR / PEAR2 / package.xml &lt; and >= 2.0 / pear installer / Pyrus(.phar) are interrelated?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 1</strong>:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://pear.php.net/manual/en/pyrus.differences.frompear.php" rel="noreferrer">Pyrus: Improvements from the PEAR Installer</a></p>
  
  <p>Basically states Pyrus is better than the old pear installer.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Pyrus no longer supports package.xml
    version 1.0</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So what's going on with anything > 1.0?</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>In addition, Pyrus has introduced
    support for PEAR2 packages that can be
    extracted to disk and then later
    upgraded using Pyrus.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm sorry ... but is that propper English or is it just phrased confusingly? It seems to say that Pyrus also still supports PEAR ... and of course PEAR2. Still leaving the main question to be answered - what is PEAR2?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 2</strong>:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/helgith/pear2-pyrus-the-look-ahead" rel="noreferrer">PEAR2 &amp; Pyrus - The look ahead</a></p>
  
  <p>It's a 2 years old outlook and slides for a presentation ... so mostly just keywords and -phrases.</p>
  
  <p>So PEAR2 is a concept overhaul ... in which way?</p>
  
  <p>Has a new installer ... Pyrus? ... but didn't the other source state that Pyrus has <em>introduced</em> support for PEAR2?</p>
  
  <p>The constraints for package distribution seem to have changed ... only stable and PHPUnit coverage of at least 50% ...</p>
  
  <p>The rest doesn't convey a clear meaning to me.</p>