boztek

Here is a guide on using Homebrew to install a PHP 5.2 based stack that will live along side the PHP 5.3 that the Mac OS X 10.6 ships with. Currently this installs MySQL 5.1.41, PHP 5.2.12 and all dependencies.

It is for use with the Apache that ships with Snow Leopard and is compiled as 64-bit binaries on appropriate hardware, using the LLVM compiler.

The four easy steps are:

1. Install Homebrew
2. Grab my PHP 5.2 formula (Homebrew’s individual build scripts)
3. Start the build, grab coffee, stare at screen
4. Finish mysql install, edit apache config, restart apache

Install Homebrew

The following assumes you have installed XCode (get it from the Snow Leopard install disk or download from Apple), don’t have git installed(1) and have no /usr/local folder(2). Homebrew is a lightweight system for installing free software on the Mac (Snow Leopard optimised) from source. By default, all software is installed into /usr/local.

The easiest way to get Homebrew is to download and run the following commands at the terminal. They will build a copy of git in the process and link your local Homebrew to the mainline which is the quick way to get new build scripts.

$   sudo mkdir /usr/local
$   sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local
$   curl -L http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C /usr/local
$   brew install git
$   cd /usr/local
$   git init
$   git remote add origin git://github.com/mxcl/homebrew.git
$   git pull origin master

Now you are ready to get the homebrew formula for PHP 5.2 and build a fresh stack.

Grab my PHP 5.2 formula

I am going to assume that you have installed Homebrew at /usr/local and are managing it with git - this would be the case if you used the instructions above. To get my PHP 5.2 build scripts, simply track my fork of Homebrew and merge in the php52 branch:

$   cd /usr/local
$   git remote add boztek git://github.com/boztek/homebrew.git && git fetch boztek
$   git checkout boztek/php52 && git checkout -b working
$   git pull --rebase origin master

If the last line causes a conflict during a rebase, don’t worry, just skip any failing patches:

$   git rebase --skip

Now when you want to keep up with the latest formulae in the main line of Homebrew you can re-run that last line:

$   git pull --rebase origin master

Start the build, grab coffee, stare at screen

The following command will build PHP 5.2 and MySQL with dependencies:

$   brew install php52 --with-mysql --with-apache

You might want to grab a beer as is also the Homebrew best practice …

Finish mysql install, edit apache config, restart apache

You just need to finish the MySQL install, set up your php.ini to your liking, point apache to your new PHP and restart the web server:

$   launchctl load -w /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.1.41/com.mysql.mysqld.plist
$   mysql_install_db
$   mysql_secure_installation

Recommended options are: change the root password [Y], keep the anonymous user [n], disallow remote root [Y], keep test database [n] and reload privilege tables [Y].

Your new PHP 5.2 has its own configuration which is symlinked to /usr/local/etc/php.ini. You’ll want to edit this to increase memory limit, upload and post sizes.3

The last step is to point apache to the module installed at /usr/local/Cellar/php/5.2.11/libexec/libphp.so. You can do this by symlinking the module into /usr/libexec/apache2/ (be very careful not to clobber the built-in module)

$   sudo ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/php52/5.2.12/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.2.so

or leave it where it is, pointing to the right one in /etc/apache2/http.conf. Your http.conf should now have lines like this:

# LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.2.so

Finally restart apache and test it out …

$   sudo apachectl graceful-stop
$   sudo apachectl start
$   echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > ~/Sites/php52.php
$   open http://localhost/~$USER/php52.php