Installing pecl and pear on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, macOS 10.12 Sierra, macOS 10.13 High Sierra (< 10.13.3)

Question

So it looks like the new \'System Integrity Protection\' lockdown of /usr (among other directories) makes pear and pecl a non-starter. Has anyone found a workaround short of

Answer 1

When brew is used and not linked, use:

brew install php@5.6
brew unlink php@5.6

$(brew --prefix php@5.6)/bin/pecl
$(brew --prefix php@5.6)/bin/pear