It’s quite common for web engineers to develop applications on either a local machine, or a server running on the local network. In many situations one does not have the luxury of a domain name service to base everything off of, and it becomes a matter of using the IP address or an internal host file.

For example, I have an internal server that we do most of our development on and we’ve typically placed everything in the default htdocs directory. That tends to be a problem if we’re working on a pre-existing application that was designed to work only from the root level.

In the following steps I’ll describe setting up a virtual host and how to trick your computer into simulating the domain service.
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While I was at zendcon I needed to setup my macbook with a typical apache/php/mysql server, but I was unsatisfied with both the default server that apple included and with the install system provided by XAMPP. I’ve since setup a server on both my MacBook and my iMac.

In order to get support for mysql as well as tools necessary for compiling, you need to install the apple developer tools. Check your original mac disc as you may already have a copy.

Anyway, on with our install:

Apache

First, download the latest version of the apache httpd web server.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-module=so --enable-module=rewrite

Then, run the standard make, sudo make install.

MySQL

Then download the latest mysql source file. Make sure you download the source “Compressed GNU TAR archive (tar.gz)” as we’ll need to custom compile it.

However, PHP5 no longer includes mysql shared libraries needed during the configure process. To get these, download the source file for the mysql version you just installed. Once downloaded, decompress it and run the following:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-unix-socket-path=/usr/local/mysql/run/mysql_socket --with-mysqld-user=mysql --with-comment --with-debug

make

sudo make install

sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_install_db --force

sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/run
sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql/data

sudo chgrp -R mysql /usr/local/mysql

sudo chown -R mysql /usr/local/mysql/run /usr/local/mysql/var /usr/local/mysql/data

Then start the server with:

sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

zlib

Then, install zlib if it’s not already installed on your system. Download zlib, and it should be a basic ./configure, make, sudo make install process.

Once zlib is installed, make sure you know the path as we’ll need it during the php configure process.

PHP

Next, download the latest php package. Decompress it, and now we’re ready to configure.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-cli --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-zlib-dir=/usr/local --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs

Then, run make and sudo make install to complete the process.

Restart apache and test everything out. If php didn’t do it automatically, add in AddType application/x-httpd-php .php to your httpd.conf file – commonly located in /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf.

Then, start your webserver.

sudo /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl start

And finally, once everything is done you’ll want to setup your account to properly allow access to mysql and apache commands. Just run the following to add their paths to your bash profile:

echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/apache/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile