
PHP's PEAR on Mac OS X
by Jason Perkins01/21/2003
The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is an online repository of high-quality, peer-reviewed PHP classes that conform to a rigorous coding standard. Started in 1999, PEAR was until recently only available via its CVS repository. In order to download and install the packages it contained, developers needed to master a somewhat arcane set of commands, often copied and pasted from a FAQ, and usually assuming some level of familiarity with CVS in general.
The release of the PEAR Package Manager has changed all of that. In terms of functionality, it's similar to Perl's CPAN or Fink for Mac OS X in that using this command line utility you can browse, install, update, and remove PHP packages from a central, remote PEAR server to your local system. Installing, configuring, and using the PEAR Package Manager on OS X 10.2 is the focus of this article.
Laying the Groundwork
First, make certain that you've installed Apple's 2002-08-23 Security Update by running the Software Update application in your computer's System Preferences. Apple has updated at least one library that's required for this installation to work. Next you'll need to install the PHP CGI binary before you can run the PEAR Package Manager's Command Line Installer. Execute the following from a new window in Terminal to download and install the PHP CGI binary:
% curl -O http://www2.entropy.ch/download/php-cgi-4.1.1.gz
% gunzip php-cgi-4.1.1.gz
% sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin
% sudo mv ./php-cgi-4.1.1 /usr/local/bin/php
% sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/php
To test the install, at the prompt enter:
% php -v
You should be rewarded with the current version of the PHP CGI binary that you just installed. If you see a message indicating that it wasn't found, make certain that /usr/local/bin is in your path by entering at the command line:
% echo $PATH
That command will generate output that looks something similar to:
/bin:usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/lib:.
Each directory in the path is separated from the other directories by a
colon. If you don't see an entry for /usr/local/bin
listed in
the output, then you'll need to identify your specific shell to modify its
path. From the command line, enter:
% echo $SHELL
If /bin/tcsh is output, then execute these commands:
% echo 'set path = ($path /usr/local/bin)' >> ~/.cshrc
% source ~/.cshrc
If /bin/bash is output from the echo $SHELL command then enter:
% echo 'PATH=$PATH:usr/local/bin' >> ~/.bash_profile
% source .bash_profile
When a shell is initially launched, it looks for a configuration file
in the home directory of the user that launched it. For tcsh this is the
.cshrc
file, and for bash it's the .bash_profile
file. Within that file you can place several different types of
configuration information, initialize new variables, or modify existing
variables that the shell will use. We're interesting in modifying the
$PATH
variable.
As explained earlier, the $PATH
variable is a colon
delimited list of directories that the shell will search through for a
command when you invoke that command from the shell. For instance, you
know that ls will list the current directories contents.
Here's how this happens. When you type ls and press enter, the shell
begins searching the directories specified in the $PATH
variable (in the order in which they're specified in the variable) for the
ls
command. When it finds the ls
command it stop
searching and executes that command.
Related Reading ![]() Learning Unix for Mac OS X |
We need to modify the $PATH
so that we can enter php from
the command line and have the shell able to locate and run the PHP
binary. To accomplish this, we need to append the
/usr/local/bin
directory to the $PATH
. That
appending is what the first line in both cases accomplishes. Note that we
said that the configuration file is read when the shell initially starts
so our appending of the $PATH
normally wouldn't take place
until we launched a new shell.
The source command lets us get around that by causing the shell to read
the specified configuration file at runtime. With those two commands we've
modified the $PATH
-- from now on when we launch a shell it
will be able to find the PHP command in /usr/local/bin
-- and
we've caused the currently running shell to read its configuration file
again. Now we can proceed with the current shell able to find and run the
PHP binary.
I covered the two most common shells used; if you use an alternate such
as zsh, then you'll need to check its documentation and add
/usr/local/bin
to its path. At this point, we've finished
laying the groundwork and can start the installation of the PEAR Package
Manager.
Installing and Configuring the PEAR Package Manager
To begin the installation of the PEAR Package Manager, enter the following at the prompt in Terminal:
% curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear | php
Note: If you're at all concerned about security, be sure to read the source of that URL first before executing it.
This command starts curl, has it access
http://pear.php.net/go-pear
, and pipes the source of that page
(which is a PHP script) to the binary PHP executable that you just installed.
As the installer runs, you'll be asked a series of questions by the script in
preparation for the actual installation. First, you'll be asked to confirm that
you want to install the PEAR command: press Enter to continue with the install.
Second, you'll be asked for configuration details for a proxy if one exists.
Third, you'll be asked to review the suggested file layout for the PEAR
install. We're going to modify that section of the install.
The initial, default install of PHP on Mac OS X places the PEAR
packages in /System/Library/PHP/PEAR
. Placing the packages
retrieved with the PEAR Package Manager there would entail either changing
the permissions of that directory or running the Package Manager via
sudo. For security reasons, neither of these options is attractive. We'll
specify that the PEAR packages should be installed in the
/usr/local
directory that we established earlier. When the
installer displays the directory scheme that it will use, modify it so
that it matches the following:
- Installation Prefix set to
/usr/local
- Binaries Directory set to
$prefix/bin
- PHP Code Directory set to
$prefix/share/pear
Finally, you'll be asked to confirm that you want to install the packages that are bundled with the PEAR Package Manager; select yes for this option. With the setup questions behind us, the installer will run for a bit, creating the subdirectories that you specified if they don't already exist, downloading and installing the Package Manager and the additional packages that it requires. When it's finished, you'll be rewarded with:
The 'pear' command is now at your service at /usr/local/bin/pear
Run it without parameters to see the available actions, try 'pear list' to
see what packages are installed, or 'pear help' for help.
At this point, the installation is complete. For your local PHP install
to make use of the local PEAR repository and the packages that you install
there, you'll need to create or edit the file
/usr/local/lib/php.ini
and add (or modify) the include path
to tell PHP the location of the new PEAR directory. First open the file in
BBEdit (or your editor of choice) with:
% bbedit -c /usr/local/lib/php.ini
and modify (or add) the include_path
variable to include the
/usr/local/share/pear
directory:
include_path = ".:/usr/local/share/pear";
When PHP processes a script and encounters an include statement, it
will search the directories specified in the include_path
for
the included file. Each directory in the include_path is separated from
the others by a colon. In UNIX parlance, the current directory is
represented with a single period. Paraphrased, that
include_path
means: When PHP encounters an include, it should
first look in the current directory for the specified file. If it's not in
the current directory, then it should look in the
/usr/local/share/pear
directory for the specified file.
Although I used the include statement for demonstrative purposes, this
applies equally to the require statement.
If you haven't saved your modified php.ini
, do so
now. Congratulations, you now have the PEAR Package Manager installed and
configured on your system. Now we'll discuss its use.
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