[PEAR-BUG] Bug #19624 [NEW]: Pear Installation Fails 90% of the time

From:             kastor
Operating system: Windows 7
Package version:  
PHP version:      5.4.7
Package:          Documentation
Bug Type:         Bug
Bug description:  Pear Installation Fails 90% of the time

Description:
------------
The documentation for installing PEAR says it's simple. From the massive
list of comments in the installation instructions it is obvious that it is
not simple at all. If it were simple, people wouldn't be confused and lost
trying to install PEAR.

About 90% of the time that I try to install pear using go-pear.phar, the
installation is unsuccessful. Sometimes it says that PEAR can't read a temp
file, sometimes it says that the package isn't a package. No matter what
happens, the installer continues as if everything is going to be ok. When
any of the packages fails to install though, PEAR is obviously not going to
work. Now I don't know why 9 times out of 10 PEAR screws the pooch. None of
my other programs have any trouble writing and reading files... This issue
isn't isolated to the PEAR installation either, installing any package with
PEAR is prone to fail because of "missing" or "corrupt" files. I really
don't get it, PEAR is able to write to the temp directory I set up for it
so there shouldn't be a problem.

Also, the default location for pear.ini and pearsys.ini is just stupid.
Throwing random files into the windows directory is the best way to make
absolutely sure they get lost. Why not just put the settings in the same
folder as PEAR? There will be less confusion for sure.

Test script:
---------------
php go-pear.phar

Expected result:
----------------
Expect to see a working installation of PEAR

Actual result:
--------------
9 times out of 10 PEAR isn't installed properly and I can't use it at all.
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Edit bug report at http://pear.php.net/bugs/bug.php?id=19624&edit=1
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