The PEAR project has released PEAR 1.4.0 final, a major milestone release for PEAR. In addition to several killer features, every single element of PEAR has a regression test, and so stability is much higher than any previous PEAR release.

New features in a nutshell:
* full support for channels
* pre-download dependency validation
* new package.xml 2.0 format allows tremendous flexibility while maintaining BC
* support for optional dependency groups and limited support for sub-packaging
* robust dependency support
* full dependency validation on uninstall
* remote install for hosts with only ftp access - no more problems with
restricted host installation [through PEAR_RemoteInstaller package]
* full support for mirroring
* support for bundling several packages into a single tarball
* support for static dependencies on a uri-based package
* support for custom file roles and installation tasks