Why deploy code via a PEAR installer? Imagine a new release of a package you've bundled comes out fixing a critical security issue. Do you tell your users/customers to copy files on top of others and risk things being done incorrectly... ...or just do $pear upgrade package-1.01 ? You can use the pear installer for deploying your own applications and packages. Why not RPM or DEB? Or just include everything in one big archive? PEAR packages are operating system agnostic Have a 'state' indicating maturity (devel/alpha/beta/stable) Have release version numbers Contain examples, unit tests, documentation The installer handles interdependencies