PEAR directory problem on Windows

Question

I've downloaded the ZIP archive of PHP and extracted it under my profile. I then needed some PEAR packages. go-pear.bat apparently installed PEAR just fine, I just needed to go into the pear.bat file afterwards and adapt the path to php.exe – no big deal and after that it ran.

However, when I try installing something I get the following error:

ERROR: failed to mkdir C:\php5\pear\data\Console_CommandLine\data

Naturally, no write access is allowed in the root directory but I'm a little at a loss to know how exactly PEAR thinks it should install anything in a location that neither exists nor is configured anywhere. PHP currently resides somewhere below H:\ (subst'ed to my profile). All paths I entered during PEAR installation were sane and the only place I can find C:\php5 is in PEAR/go-pear.phar and in the documentation. One of those is something I shouldn't change anyway, I guess and the other thing is hardly relevant for the program itself.

Now, I probably could go in and make C:\php5 a junction/symlink to the directory where PHP lies currently or actually install it in that location – both things I'd rather avoid since this was originally just intended for a little test of something.

I since looked into pear help install and apparently I can use -P or -R so set some paths. The exact difference between those is still unclear to me but it won't hurt to try them, I guess. Somehow the results were ... unexpected:

-P H:\Downloads\php\PEAR resulted in the fun error (among others)

ERROR: failed to mkdir C:\Downloads\php\PEAR\php5\pear\data\Console_CommandLine\data

while -R using the same path (apparently -R dictates where downloads are stored, since that worked before I guess I shouldn't touch this) resulted in even more fun:

download directory "C:\Downloads\php\PEAR\Users\JOHANN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\pear\download" is not writeable. Change download_dir config variable to a writeable dir

By now I guess both C:\ and php5 are somewhere hardcoded for no apparent reason (my environment variables also contain nothing of that sort) so I'll go digging again, this time looking for shorter string and therefore longer result lists.

But if anyone has an idea about this in the meantime, this might be helpful.

Answer 1

The problem is that PEAR looks for its ini file in the Windows directory, and because it doesn't find it there, it resorts to guessing the location. Even worse, you can't change any configuration settings with pear config-set because PEAR doesn't have a pear.ini to write to. At the same time, PEAR ignores an existing pear.ini file in its own directory. It's a mess. See this bug report.

If there is just one global PEAR install, PEAR can be told where to look for an ini file by creating an environment variable, PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR, pointing to the right directory.

But if there are multiple, local PEAR installs, you'll have to patch pear.bat by adding this line:

IF "%PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR%"=="" SET "PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR=C:\path\to\pear.ini\directory"

Answer 2

A slightly better option than michael h's answer might be:

1. Open $prefix\pear\PEAR\Config.php where $prefix is the value used in the PEAR installer. (On my Windows system, $prefix was C:\php\5.4.0)

2. Find the section below:

   if (getenv('PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR')) {
       define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', getenv('PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR'));
   } elseif (getenv('SystemRoot')) {
       define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', getenv('SystemRoot'));
   } else {
       define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', PHP_SYSCONFDIR);
   }
   

3. And make the following changes:

   if (getenv('PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR')) {
       define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', getenv('PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR'));
   //} elseif (getenv('SystemRoot')) {
       //define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', getenv('SystemRoot'));
   } else {
       //define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', PHP_SYSCONFDIR);
   
       // This next line is new
       define('PEAR_CONFIG_SYSCONFDIR', $PEAR_INSTALL_DIR);
   }
   

This solution is less hazard-prone when dealing with multiple PHP/PEAR versions/installations, especially when running more than one at the same time, as you avoid environment clobbering.

Apparently the PEAR developers overlooked the fact that WINDOWS, Program Files and friends have been deprecated as application-data directories since Windows Vista, and are generally no longer writable by non-elevated applications. (For good security reasons.)