To be able to use the proposal tool (PEPr), you have to apply for a PEAR website account. This account will usually be granted within one or two days. After that you can open a new proposal using the "New Package Proposal" interface.
The package proposal process is divided into 4 stages: "Draft", "Proposal", "Call for Votes" and "Finished". Every proposal has to run through all of these stages. During each stage (except for the draft stage) an email is send to you (the proposer) and the PEAR developers mailing list for any action.
At first your proposal is a draft. This simply means you can edit it, view it and it is shown up on the PEPr overview page as a draft. This stage is for you to play around with PEPr, to shape your proposal nicely and to prepare it for the proposal process. You can switch to the next stage when ever you want to publish your proposal and get feedback from the PEAR community.
After switching to the stage Proposal you have a real proposal. Either through email or through PEPr itself the community will give you hints and ask questions about the proposed package. Generally it is a good idea to follow these suggestions, but sometimes people in the community will have different visions for your package, which should be sorted out during this stage. After a week of comments you may switch to the next phase. You should only switch to the next stage, if you are sure that the PEAR community will accept your package.
The next stage is the voting stage, during which you may not change your proposal anymore. You may not edit nor delete the proposal from now on. During the proposal stage, "Call for Votes," every active PEAR maintainer may give one vote on the proposal. Votes are given using the numbers -1, 0 and +1, where -1 means "I'm against this package to be added to PEAR in the current form," +1 says "I'm in favour of getting this package into PEAR in the current form" and 0 means "I have looked at your package, but I am undecided." The time to vote for a package is 7 calendar days. If after this time less than 5 votes have been cast, the developers get another 7 days to cast their votes. After this time the voting is ended, whether there are 5 votes or not.
Votes on proposals can be bound to a condition. These conditional votes indicate that you have to fulfil a certain condition the voters expect to be fulfilled. If there are conditional votes you are expected to read and follow them! The conditions on a vote will be provided in the votes comment. Each vote may have comments. Reading those is always a good idea!
Now your proposal is finished. To determine if the proposal was successful or not, the sum of all votes is computed. If the result is greater or equal to 5 the proposal has been accepted. Otherwise we are sorry to say, that the community has decided to reject it. Have a look at their comments during proposal and vote stage to find out why. Maybe you can rework your package and propose it again, but please do not try to hand in a proposal the same way twice.
If your proposal has been accepted, you may put your package into PEAR. If this is your first proposal, please contact the PEAR Group via email to get your current PEAR website account upgraded to a full featured developer account. After that, you can register your package and upload releases.
The process of preparing and uploading a release is described in the Developer Guide.