PEAR¶

ID: pear
Links: Home page · Documentation · Repository · Wikipedia
Upstream stars: ⭐ 115
Last commit: 2026-01-25
Version requirement: >= 1.10
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS · ⨂ Unix · 🪟 Windows
Operations: installed · outdated · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup
purl types: pkg:pear/
CLI name: pear
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: pear
Source: pear.py

The PHP Extension and Application Repository.

PEAR ships with PHP itself and installs libraries into the interpreter’s php_dir, against its own registry at pear.php.net.

Important

Whether an install needs root is a property of the PHP install, not of PEAR: a distribution’s php_dir is /usr/share/php and refuses an ordinary user with Cannot install, php_dir for channel "pear.php.net" is not writable by the current user. Escalate the mutating operations with mpm --sudo, or a [mpm.overrides.pear] sudo = true entry. The privilege-free alternative is relocating the PEAR prefix to a directory you own.

Caution

Every network operation costs one REST round-trip per package, and pear.php.net answers slowly: outdated measured 63 seconds warm and 105 seconds cold against a host carrying only six packages, so it approaches mpm’s 120-second read-only cap on an inventory barely larger. Raise mpm --timeout on a host with more. installed is unaffected, reading the local registry with no network at all.

What `mpm` adds to `pear`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not pear alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover pear alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `pear` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know pear: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `pear`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`pear list --allchannels`	`mpm --pear installed`
List outdated packages	`pear list-upgrades`	`mpm --pear outdated`
Install a package	`pear install Text_Password`	`mpm install pkg:pear/Text_Password`
Upgrade one package	`pear upgrade Text_Password`	`mpm --pear upgrade Text_Password`
Upgrade everything	`pear upgrade`	`mpm --pear upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`pear uninstall Text_Password`	`mpm remove pkg:pear/Text_Password`
Clear caches	`pear clear-cache`	`mpm --pear cleanup --cache`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✅	Each package is reported under its bare name, so the same name on two channels would collapse onto one entry.
`outdated`	✅
`orphans`
`search`	❌	Search needs one REST call per package against `pear.php.net` and never completes within `mpm`’s read-only timeout.
`install`	✅
`upgrade`	✅
`upgrade_all`	✅
`remove`	✅
`sync`	✅
`cleanup`	✅
`doctor`

Configuration¶

Ignore pear on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-pear option.
Ignore it for every run in your configuration:
```
[mpm]
pear = false
```
Raise the timeout of all pear calls:
```
[mpm.overrides.pear]
timeout = 900
```

Run mpm config-template pear to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

[mpm.overrides.pear]
cli_names = [
    "pear",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = []
pre_cmds = []
requirement = ">=1.10.0"
stop_on_error = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "PEAR Version:\\s+(?P<version>\\S+)",
]

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around pear, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --pear dump pear.toml, then mpm restore pear.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --pear sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

Its privileged operations are cleanup, install, remove, sync, upgrade, upgrade_all.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of PEAR’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: PEAR (pkg:pear)
Publish date: ✅ per-release <da> in the REST release document (example), which no pear command surfaces

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces¶

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know PEAR well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ pear list --allchannels
INSTALLED PACKAGES, CHANNEL __URI:
==================================
(no packages installed)

INSTALLED PACKAGES, CHANNEL DOC.PHP.NET:
========================================
(no packages installed)

INSTALLED PACKAGES, CHANNEL PEAR.PHP.NET:
=========================================
PACKAGE          VERSION STATE
Archive_Tar      1.5.0   stable
Console_Getopt   1.4.3   stable
PEAR             1.10.16 stable
PEAR_Manpages    1.10.0  stable
Structures_Graph 1.2.0   stable
XML_Util         1.4.5   stable

INSTALLED PACKAGES, CHANNEL PECL.PHP.NET:
=========================================
(no packages installed)

$ pear list-upgrades
PEAR.PHP.NET AVAILABLE UPGRADES (STABLE):
=========================================
CHANNEL      PACKAGE     LOCAL            REMOTE           SIZE
pear.php.net Archive_Tar 1.5.0 (stable)   1.6.0 (stable)   22kB
pear.php.net PEAR        1.10.16 (stable) 1.10.18 (stable) 288kB

Version check¶

The version is probed by running:

$ pear version
PEAR Version: 1.10.16
PHP Version: 8.4.24
Zend Engine Version: 4.4.24
Running on: Linux debian 6.12.94+deb13-arm64 #1 SMP Debian 6.12.94-1 (2026-06-20) aarch64

and extracted with:

r"PEAR Version:\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`pear/pear-core`
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Changelog¶

8.0.0 (2026-09-20)
- Add the PEAR package manager with inventory, outdated, install, remove, upgrade, channel sync and cache cleanup.