PEAR is an acronym for PHP Extension and Application Repository. It is a repository of PHP packages or extensions. You can freely incorporate any of these extensions from PEAR in your code. The PEAR project was established by Stig S. Bakken in 1999.

Most of the precompiled distributions of PHP such as XAMPP already have PEAR bundled with it. If not, you can install PEAR by downloading go-pear.phar file from https://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar and run

php go-pear.phar

In a Windows Command Prompt to start the installation.

Based on your responses to the setup steps, the PEAR Package Manager will be installed in the path, specified during installation.

You can then add that installation path to your PATH environment. Either do this manually (Start > Control Panel > System > Environment) or run (double-click) the newly generated PEAR_ENV.reg that”s now found in the PHP source directory.

You can now access the PEAR Package Manager by running the command −

C:xamppphp>pear 

In a Windows Command Prompt.

You will get the list of PEAR commands as follows −

C:xamppphp>pear
Commands:
build                  Build an Extension From C Source
bundle                 Unpacks a Pecl Package
channel-add            Add a Channel
channel-alias          Specify an alias to a channel name
channel-delete         Remove a Channel From the List
channel-discover       Initialize a Channel from its server
channel-info           Retrieve Information on a Channel
channel-login          Connects and authenticates to remote channel server
channel-logout         Logs out from the remote channel server
channel-update         Update an Existing Channel
clear-cache            Clear Web Services Cache
config-create          Create a Default configuration file
config-get             Show One Setting
config-help            Show Information About Setting
config-set             Change Setting
config-show            Show All Settings
convert                Convert a package.xml 1.0 to package.xml 2.0 format
cvsdiff                Run a "cvs diff" for all files in a package
cvstag                 Set CVS Release Tag
download               Download Package
download-all           Downloads each available package from the default channel
info                   Display information about a package
install                Install Package
list                   List Installed Packages In The Default Channel
list-all               List All Packages
list-channels          List Available Channels
list-files             List Files In Installed Package
list-upgrades          List Available Upgrades
login                  Connects and authenticates to remote server [Deprecated in favor of channel-login]
logout                 Logs out from the remote server [Deprecated in favor of channel-logout]
makerpm                Builds an RPM spec file from a PEAR package
package                Build Package
package-dependencies   Show package dependencies
package-validate       Validate Package Consistency
pickle                 Build PECL Package
remote-info            Information About Remote Packages
remote-list            List Remote Packages
run-scripts            Run Post-Install Scripts bundled with a package
run-tests              Run Regression Tests
search                 Search remote package database
shell-test             Shell Script Test
sign                   Sign a package distribution file
svntag                 Set SVN Release Tag
uninstall              Un-install Package
update-channels        Update the Channel List
upgrade                Upgrade Package
upgrade-all            Upgrade All Packages [Deprecated in favor of calling upgrade with no parameters]

Installing packages with PEAR is so easy. One way to find packages, is using the official PEAR site https://pear.php.net/packages.php and then run

pear install <package-name>

The next step is to use the PEAR package in your code. To do that, you should include the main PHP script of the package in your program with include, require, include_once or require_once statements.

<?php
   include "PEARPACKAGE.php";
   . . . . . 
   // rest of the code
   . . . . . 
?>

A newer PHP package manager called Composer is an alternative available for managing packages for a PHP project. Composer also supports the installation of PEAR packages. Composer is preferred by many instead of PEAR for PHP package distribution.