Manually installing PEAR on a per site basis

[master w bates III]

I've been using PEAR packages recently on a few project. I really like how simple it is to install and utilize them.

One thing freaks me out a bit, having a server wide installation of PEAR, theoretically one package update could break hundreds of sites. What I am wondering is if anyone has any experience installing pear packages on a per site basis.

What I would ideally like is for to have a PEAR/ directory in each site with only the required packages.

Is there a simple way of doing this? Ideally just dealing with the pear directories themselves instead of using their awesome update tool?

If there are reasons that this is terrible practice please let me know before I shoot myself in the foot.

Thanks for any help!

[dreamcatcher]

Did you check the php/pear documentation at all? I`m assuming most people here have it as a site wide installation.

dc