This is essentially a repost of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4159369/ubuntu-9-04-pecl-extension-downloads-but-does-not-install. Hoping maybe someone can help me here.

I've done this:

sudo apt-get install php-pear 
sudo apt-get install php5-dev 
sudo apt-get install libcurl3-openssl-dev

which installs fine. However, the next step:

sudo pecl install pecl_http 

Doesn't install the extension, but merely downloads it. There are no error messages. So I have unpacked it and built it myself per http://php.net/manual/en/install.pecl.phpize.php Essentially:

cd pecl_http
phpize
./configure
make
make install

I also make test'd to check all ok - and it failed one test: HttpRequest, which is kind of fundamental to this package. And indeed this doesn't work:

$r = new HttpRequest('http://www.google.com');
$r->send;
echo $r->getResponseCode();

No request is sent, the response code is zero, but no errors either.

How can I get this damn thing installed? Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong? Any alternatives, workarounds? Help appreciated.

Thanks