Getting and installing the PEAR package manager

After you have downloaded and installed PHP, you have to manually execute the batch file located in e.g. c:\php\go-pear.bat. The setup will ask you some questions and afterwards the PEAR Package Manager will be installed in the path, which you have specified during installation.

Finally you have to add that installation path to your PATH environment. Either do this manually (Start > Control Panel > System > Environment) or run (double-click) the newly generated PEAR_ENV.reg that's now found in the PHP source directory.

After that you can access the PEAR Package Manager by running the command pear in a Windows Command Prompt.

To update your PEAR installation, request http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar in your browser and save the output to a local file go-pear.phar. You can then run

        php go-pear.phar             

in a Windows Command Prompt to start the update process.

After changing php.ini , you need to restart your web server.

Now check that PEAR works.

When using PHP, the PEAR Package Manager is already installed unless one has used the ./configure option --without-pear.

If one uses a version of PHP that is supplied by Unix/Linux/BSD distributors it may be necessary to manually install PEAR. Users should consult the documentation for the respective distribution in this case.

If you want to re-install the Package Manager, you can use the following provisional way:

        $ wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar $ php go-pear.phar             

Some Linux distributions (e.g. Redhat) seem to be using links instead of lynx as the name for their command line browser. If this is the case for you, you need to change the above line correspondingly.

Now check that PEAR works.

On Mac OS 10.4 and earlier, the PEAR Package Manager is already installed in /usr/bin/pear.

If you are using Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), would like to install a new copy, or re-install the PEAR Package Manager use the following command:

        $ wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar $ php -d detect_unicode=0 go-pear.phar             

For a system-wide installation, you will need to execute the go-pear script with increased permissions. This is only recommended for advanced users.

         $ wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar $ sudo php -d detect_unicode=0 go-pear.phar               

Now check that PEAR works.

If you are running your site at a web hosting provider with no direct access to the server (via local logins, Telnet or SSH), you can use the PEAR Installer using the Web Frontend or (S)FTP.

Go to go-pear and save as go-pear.php. Copy go-pear.php to your server and open the corresponding URL in your browser, for example http://example.com/pear/go-pear.php.

Do not forget to protect the pear directory if you did not do already before the installation: Make it unreadable and not executable from external (i.e. put it outside public_html).

Now check that PEAR works.