... without having trouble with your PEAR directory.

If you use the admin generator but don't like the generated html code, you either can use a custom css file to redo the style, or you have to copy the original theme from

/path/to/$PEAR/symfony/generator/sfPropelAdmin/default

and redo the html here. The problem with that technique is, that you have to manage this PEAR directory from now on, instead having the new theme located in your project folder. That's bad, because your theme will be lost if you clear your PEAR installation or decide to uninstall the symfony version and re-install another one.

After doing some research in the forums and docs, I tried to create the theme in my project directory, with the expected folder structure. I created a folder structure in my projects data dir, like this:

/path/to/$PEAR/data/generator/sfPropelAdmin/$THEME_NAME

I just copied all directories and files from the default sfPropelAdmin theme to this folder, but this didn't worked out. symfony wasn't able to find this theme. So, I created a symbolic link to this folder:

ln -s \
/path/to/$PROJECT_NAME/data/generator/sfPropelAdmin/$THEME_NAME \
/path/to/$PEAR/data/symfony/generator/sfPropelAdmin/$THEME_NAME

Now, you I modify the template to fit my needs, e.g. reset the css classes, add a new table structure and so on. After upgrading/uninstalling/installing a new copy of symfony, don't forget to check if the symbolic link still exists. If not, just re-create it, and everything should work.

If your webserver and php understoods the following of symbolic links (Windows doesn't), you can use this new theme for your sfPropelAdmin generated modules via the theme configuration handle in your generator.yml:

generator:
  class:              sfPropelAdminGenerator
  param:
    model_class:      ModelClass
    theme:            $THEME_NAME