PEAR location on install?

Question

I'm trying to install PEAR, but I'm confused by the locations suggested.

I'm using Wampserver to run my PHP scripts, and I wanted to do unit tests. So I found PEAR.

I tried installing via the go-pear.bat file, but that didn't work. I found out more about this here: http://blog.pear.php.net/2009/07/01/php-53-windows-and-pear/

So I downloaded the php file. The comments in the file suggest I

Put go-pear.php on your webserver, where you would put your website

I find this a little strange. Still, I put it in the folder along with the other php files. Here's what I was presented with:

Maybe it is because I'm not very experienced with this, but I would initially believe I should put PEAR in a central location, using 1 pear install for all possible future projects.

Or is this the prefered configuration? And why?

Answer 1

Using a central location is the standard approach - it sometimes makes sense to have individual installs though, particularly if a speficic project requires older versions of some pear packages and would break if newer versions were installed.

Answer 2

Here's a pretty straightforward tutorial on how to set up PEAR on Wamp.

http://trac.symfony-project.org/wiki/HowToInstallPearOnWindowsWithWamp

You may have missed a few steps like adding PEAR to the PATH for Windows.

Also if you have a lot of problems with WAMPServer (I used to) there are alternatives like Zend Server Community Edition. http://www.zend.com/en/products/server-ce/index