[horde] Installing and deploying Horde: PEAR vs. Git

[Andreas Rieger]

Hi,

the docs mention PEAR as the recommended way to install Horde and the 
installation via Git is (only) explained in the context of development 
setups.

So I am wondering what has to be considered if we would use Git as the 
source for our production deployments? What are the main benefits of 
using PEAR? What are the drawbacks using Git?

I am asking as the route via Git seems much more flexible.
For example we customise some aspects of Horde for our setup (adjust 
templates, add some extensions etc.). Right now there are a lot of 
manual steps involved if a new version of Horde gets released. Tracking 
the Horde repository on Github in an 'upstream' branch and creating an 
'integration' branch were we apply our customizations on top of it seems 
so much cleaner; especially as we could continuously pull in the latest 
changes and we'd still be able to quickly overview all our patches and 
adjustments and push new versions to our test and live server.

So apart from the pros and cons of 'Git vs. PEAR' I am really interested 
to learn how others organize their Horde deployments. Especially how you 
deal with local adjustments and server specific settings and how you 
automate the process of rolling out new versions.

Best regards,
Andreas