PHP Cookbook

21.6. Upgrading PEAR Packages

Problem

You want to upgrade a package on your system to the latest version for additional functionality and bug fixes.

Solution

Find out if any upgrades are available and then tell pear to upgrade the packages you want:

% pear list-upgrades
% pear upgrade 
               Package_Name

Discussion

Upgrading to a new version of a package is a simple task with the PEAR Package Manager. If you know a specific package is out of date, you can upgrade it directly. However, you may also want to just periodically check to see if any new releases are available.

To do this, user the list-upgrades command, which prints out a table showing package names, the new version number, and the size of the download:

% pear list-upgrades
Available Upgrades (stable):
=  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  =
+-------------+---------+--------+
| Package     | Version | Size   |
| Archive_Tar | 0.9     | 8.9kB  |
| Auth        | 1.0.2   | 8.8kB  |
| Auth_HTTP   | 1.0.1   | 1.7kB  |
| DB          | 1.3     | 58kB   |
| HTTP        | 1.1     | 2.9kB  |
| Mail        | 1.0.1   | 11.6kB |
| Mail_Mime   | 1.2.1   | 15.0kB |
| Net_Ping    | 1.0.1   | 2.1kB  |
| Net_SMTP    | 1.0     | 2.8kB  |
| Net_Socket  | 1.0.1   | 3.5kB  |
| PEAR        | 0.9     | 40kB   |
| XML_Parser  | 1.0     | 4.8kB  |
| XML_RPC     | 1.0.3   | 11.9kB |
| XML_RSS     | 0.9.1   | 3.1kB  |
| XML_Tree    | 1.1     | 4.7kB  |
+-------------+---------+--------+

If you’re up to date, pear prints:

No upgrades available

To upgrade a particular package, use the upgrade command. For example:

% pear upgrade DB downloading DB-1.3.tgz ... ...done: 59,332 ...