PHP Cookbook

21.4. Installing PEAR Packages

Problem

You want to install a PEAR package.

Solution

Download and install the package from your PEAR server using the PEAR package manager:

% pear install 
               Package_Name

You can also install from any location on the Internet:

% pear install http://pear.example.com/
               Package_Name-1.0.tgz

Here’s how to install if you have a local copy of a package:

% pear install 
               Package_Name-1.0.tgz

Discussion

To install PEAR packages, you need write permission where the packages are stored; this defaults to /usr/local/lib/php/.

You can also request multiple packages at the same time:

% pear install HTML_Common HTML_Javascript
downloading HTML_Common-1.0.tgz ...
...done: 2,959 bytes
install ok: HTML_Common 1.0
downloading HTML_Javascript-1.0.0.tgz ...
...done: 4,141 bytes
install ok: HTML_Javascript 1.0.0

When installing a package, PEAR checks that you have all the necessary PHP functions and PEAR packages the new package depends on. If this check fails, PEAR reports on the dependencies:

% pear install HTML_Table
downloading HTML_Table-1.1.tgz ...
...done: 5,168 bytes

requires package `HTML_Common' >= 1.0
HTML_Table: dependencies failed

To fix this problem, download and install the missing packages first. If you want to ignore these dependencies, force installation with -n or --nodeps. You can then later install the required package.

See Also

Recipe 21.6 for information on installing PECL packages; Recipe 21.7 for more on upgrading an existing package; Recipe 21.8 to uninstall ...