pear modules in MacPorts

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

We have over 500 pear modules that were added to MacPorts in a batch in 2011, most of which have never been updated since then. I'm guessing most of them are out of date by now. Just looking at a few:

$ port livecheck name:^pear-
pear-Archive_Tar seems to have been updated (port version: 1.3.13, new version: 1.4.3)
pear-Auth_RADIUS seems to have been updated (port version: 1.0.7, new version: 1.1.0)
pear-Auth_SASL seems to have been updated (port version: 1.0.6, new version: 1.1.0)
pear-AWSSDKforPHP seems to have been updated (port version: 1.5.8.1, new version: 2.6.16)
pear-Cache_Lite seems to have been updated (port version: 1.7.15, new version: 1.8.2)
Error: cannot check if pear-Config was updated (The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden)
pear-Config_Lite seems to have been updated (port version: 0.2.1, new version: 0.2.6)
pear-Console_CommandLine seems to have been updated (port version: 1.2.0, new version: 1.2.2)
pear-Console_Getargs seems to have been updated (port version: 1.3.5, new version: 1.4.0)
pear-Console_Getopt seems to have been updated (port version: 1.3.1, new version: 1.4.1)
pear-Console_Table seems to have been updated (port version: 1.1.4, new version: 1.3.1)
pear-Crypt_GPG seems to have been updated (port version: 1.3.2, new version: 1.6.2)
Error: cannot check if pear-Crypt_RC4 was updated (The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found)
Error: cannot check if pear-Crypt_RSA was updated (The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found)
pear-Date seems to have been updated (port version: 1.5.0a2, new version: 1.5.0a4)
pear-Date_Holidays seems to have been updated (port version: 0.21.6, new version: 0.21.8)
pear-Date_Holidays_Australia seems to have been updated (port version: 0.2.1, new version: 0.2.2)
pear-Date_Holidays_Austria seems to have been updated (port version: 0.1.4, new version: 0.1.6)
^CError: Aborted: SIGINT received.

We either need an automated way to update them all, similar to the automated way in which they were presumably originally added, or else a concerted manual effort to update them, or we need to rethink whether we want them in MacPorts at all.

There's only one non-pear port in MacPorts that depends on any pear ports, and that's "base". If we don't want to keep the entire collection of pear modules up to date in MacPorts, we could remove all but those that base needs. Or we could remove all the pear modules and base as well.

[pmetzger (Perry E. Metzger)]

I would support removing all the pear modules and base as well if no one wishes to maintain them.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

In d26fe53294848c783f9ae4cf5c1f61b7ae49bae0/macports-ports (master):

base: Delete old port

The last release was 1.4.5 in March 2010.

In Feburary 2018 the developer said:

BASE has not been upodated in years. I retired from the project and
handed it off to someone else. They got busy (I guess)
But you should NOT still be running this software.

See: ​https://sourceforge.net/p/secureideas/discussion/404428/thread/08d23885/

See: #56424

[pmetzger (Perry E. Metzger)]

In a161124315ae59e99481271f6b087b4e42b3d527/macports-ports (master):

Remove PHP PEAR modules and PortGroup

Per ​https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/4192, which after
nine months received no objections. Manually committed because of
merge conflicts.

Closes: #56424
Closes: #34063
Closes: #35228
Closes: #37119
Closes: #37524
Closes: #37683
Closes: #38910
Closes: #39869
Closes: #46688
Closes: #53510
Closes: #53632
Closes: #57316
Closes: #57318
Closes: #57320
Closes: #57321
See: #54839