As an alternative, there is also the pear upgrade-all command, which downloads and installs all available upgrades.
Uninstalling Packages
Sometimes it may be necessary to remove a package from the local PEAR installation. For this case, the PPM includes an uninstall command:
$> pear uninstall Cache
uninstall ok: Cache
If uninstall is a success, it displays a message to that effect. Otherwise, if other packages are dependent upon the one being removed, a dependency message will be displayed. If the dependency is considered optional, it will proceed with the removal. If it is a required dependency, uninstall will fail.
NOTE
Be aware that the PPM does not know whether the code in applications on the machine uses a PEAR package. It tests only known package dependencies. If a package is an optional dependency or has no dependencies, it will remove it regardless of whether any code uses it.
Alternative Installation Methods
The pear install command is versatile. It does not need to connect to to download packages. Because PEAR is a standard of coding and a system for distribution, other developers may develop packages according to the PEAR package standards and release them separately from the main repository. For the most part, these developers end up submitting a proposal to the PEAR Proposal system (PEPr), so there are few places outside of PEAR where these packages may be found, but they are therejust do a search for them.
To install any package that is not included in the PEAR database or to install packages by an alternative method, either download the gzipped file, or use the URL to install it. The install command works the same in both ways:
You may also unzip the gzipped file and install the package using its package.xml file:
pear install /path/to/package.xml
This is particularly helpful to developers for testing packages or for preparing packages for use with other package managers such as RPM Package Manager (RPM).
TIP
To see all available PPM actions, type pear help. To see the help file for a particular command, type pear help command_name.
