title: How do you change the default Pear/PECL build folder from /var/tmp?
body: <p>I'm trying to install a PECL package on Linux, but the installer never gets past the configure stage.</p>
  
  <p>My hosting provider mounted a file system at /var/tmp that prevents files from executing, and that's causing this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>root@host [/usr/local/apache/conf/includes]# pecl install pdo
  downloading PDO-1.0.3.tgz ...
  Starting to download PDO-1.0.3.tgz (52,613 bytes)
  .............done: 52,613 bytes
  12 source files, building
  running: phpize
  Configuring for:
  PHP Api Version:         20041225
  Zend Module Api No:      20060613
  Zend Extension Api No:   220060519
  building in /var/tmp/pear-build-root/PDO-1.0.3
  running: /root/tmp/pear/PDO/configure
  checking for egrep... grep -E
  checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /bin/sed
  checking for cc... cc
  checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
  checking whether the C compiler works... configure: error: cannot run C compiled programs.
  If you meant to cross compile, use `--host'.
  See `config.log' for more details.
  ERROR: `/root/tmp/pear/PDO/configure' failed
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm 99% sure the problem is that you can't execute files in /var/tmp (I copied an executable file over here and tried it to verify).  I'm sure I can get PECL to complete if I have it do its build work somewhere else, but I can't find the appropriate configuration setting.</p>
  
  <p>How do you tell PECL to build in a non-default folder?</p>