I like to wait quite a while before upgrading Mac OS X to the newest release because, for me, it often requires quite a bit of work. I had hopes that Snow Leopard would be different because Apple finally installed current versions of the whole LAMP stack, but I wanted to wait regardless… just in case.
Why the wait?
I do dev work that require custom libraries in my PHP installation – vanilla PHP from Apple doesn’t have what I need. To do that I’ve relied pretty heavily on the Fink package manager. Too many times I’ve upgraded to the new OS and some of the libraries haven’t yet been updated to work properly on the new system. Usually after a couple months either the libraries get fixed or Google will give me enough results and clues that I can fix the issue myself.
First things first
I went ahead and compiled Apache from scratch. It’s easy enough and you’ll need the 64bit support for PHP. MySQL was much easier – download the intel x86_64 installer for Mac OS X 10.5 (yes, even for Snow Leopard). Side note – MySQL finally got around to recompiling the System Prefs Pane to 64bit.
Installing Fink
I’ll save you some time. First, compile fink from source. When you set up the app, do the 64bit-only packages (you’ll know – it’ll prompt you to pick 32bit or 64bit). I tried the 64bit and PHP wouldn’t install. You can always do a separate mixed architecture install later (see here for details on mixed fink arch installs).
Compiling PHP (with GD)
I need GD. This tutorial did the trick – once I had figured out the 64bit fink issue(s). Follow it and the companion standard PHP / Snow Leopard compile tutorial, linked in that article. Take a look at my compile flags, if you’re interested:
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6
CFLAGS="-arch x86_64"
CXXFLAGS="-arch x86_64"
./configure --prefix=/Library/PHP5
--mandir=/usr/share/man
--infodir=/usr/share/info
--sysconfdir=/etc
--with-config-file-path=/etc/php.ini
--with-zlib
--with-zlib-dir=/usr
--with-openssl
--enable-zip
--enable-exif
--enable-ftp
--enable-mbstring
--enable-mbregex
--enable-soap
--enable-sockets
--with-curl
--with-curlwrappers
--disable-cgi
--with-iconv=/sw
--with-gd
--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib
--with-png-dir=/usr/X11R6
--with-freetype-dir=/usr/X11R6
--with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6
--with-apxs2=/Library/Apache2/bin/apxs
--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config
--with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
Two things: First, my PHP is installed into /Library/PHP5/. Second, my Apache is located at /Library/Apache2/. Nothin to it. Too bad it took me all day to figure this out. At least now I can move on with my life!