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

For macOS Mojave 10.14.4 just use /local instead of /usr when asked for "Installation base ($prefix)" location.