21.3. Finding Information About a Package

Problem

You want to gather information about a package, such a description of what it does, who maintains it, what version you have installed, and which license it’s released under.

Solution

If the package is installed on your machine, use the PEAR package manager’s info command: 

% pear info Net_URL

Otherwise, use the remote-info command: 

% pear remote-info SOAP

You can also view the package’s home page on http://pear.php.net.

Discussion

The info command provides summary information about a package: 

% pear info Net_URL
About Net_URL-1.0.4
=  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
+-----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Package         | Net_URL                                 |
| Summary         | Easy parsing of Urls                    |
| Description     | Provides easy parsing of URLs and their |
|                 | constituent parts.                      |
| Maintainers     | Richard heyes <richard@php.net> (lead)  |
| Version         | 1.0.4                                   |
| Release Date    | 2002-07-27                              |
| Release License | BSD                                     |
| Release State   | stable                                  |
| Release Notes   | License change                          |
| Last Modified   | 2002-08-23                              |
+-----------------+-----------------------------------------+

If you don’t have the package installed, ask the remote server for a description: 

% pear remote-info Net_URL Package details: = == == == == == == == = +-------------+-----------------------------------------+ | Latest | 1.0.4 | | Installed | 1.0.4 | | Package | Net_URL | | License | BSD | | Category | Networking | | Summary | Easy parsing of Urls | | Description | Provides easy parsing of URLs and ...

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