Using the PEAR Installer in PHP

You want to use the PEAR installer, pyrus. This allows you to install new packages, upgrade, and get information about your existing PEAR packages.
To execute a command, type the command name as the first argument on the command line:

Pyrus is a tool to manage PEAR packages. It’s not bundled with PHP, so you need to install it yourself. Fortunately, Pyrus is distributed as a self-contained PHP Archive (aka a phar). So, all that’s necessary is to download the file.

Then use PHP to run it:

Here’s how to list all installed PEAR packages with the list-packages command:

For a list of all valid PEAR commands, use help. pyrus has commands for both using and developing PEAR packages; as a result, there are many commands that you may not need.

The package command, for example, creates a new PEAR package. If you only run other people’s packages, you can safely ignore this command. See Table 27-2 for a list of frequently used commands.
Table 27-2. Common PEAR installer commands

To find where your PEAR packages are located, run the get php_dir PEAR command.
You can check the value of the include_path by calling ini_get(‘include_path’) from within PHP or by looking at your php.ini file.

If you can’t alter php.ini because you’re in a shared hosting environment, add the directory to the include_path at the top of your script before including any PEAR files.

You can configure Pyrus settings using:

Here setting is the name of the parameter to modify and value is the new value. To see all your current settings, use the get command: