Install Pear with xampp

I am fairly new to PHP and would like to investigate using Pear. I installed xampp and see that I have a Pear directory. Does this mean that Pear is installed, or do I now have to install the parts that I need? Perhaps there is a document that explains how I can get Pear up and running from xampp?

Robert

Dan: Sounds good. Where will I find the documentation for using the Pear executable? Presumably I need to install Pear packages in my own web site.

Robert

You already have pear installed. The pear executable is in the xampp\php directory.

c:\\xampp\\php> pear
Commands:
build                  Build an Extension From C Source
bundle                 Unpacks a Pecl Package
channel-add            Add a Channel
channel-alias          Specify an alias to a channel name
channel-delete         Remove a Channel From the List
channel-discover       Initialize a Channel from its server
channel-info           Retrieve Information on a Channel
channel-login          Connects and authenticates to remote channel server
channel-logout         Logs out from the remote channel server
channel-update         Update an Existing Channel
clear-cache            Clear Web Services Cache
config-create          Create a Default configuration file
config-get             Show One Setting
config-help            Show Information About Setting
config-set             Change Setting
config-show            Show All Settings
convert                Convert a package.xml 1.0 to package.xml 2.0 format
...