In my previous post, I walked through how to set up a local environment using Nginx running on port 8080 so as to avoid running anything as root or with sudo. Something that I've found incredibly annoying is when I forget to specify the port I get an error in my browser, or Chrome might even suggest something based on a search term. It's fairly easy though to configure Apache to route everything to another port.

OS X Lion comes with most of the tools you would need to do "MAMP" (Mac OS X, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) development, as outlined in my previous posts once you add a database. So then why would you want to use MacPorts? Setting your development environment up in MacPorts isolates the binaries, libraries, and configuration files, completely separate from the existing OS X install (with the exception of startup scripts). You can also tweak the configuration files on your own, apply your own patches, and apply updates that MacPorts may get before Apple pushes them. It will take more time because you'll be compiling everything, but you have all of the control. Read on for how to get things set up.

With the release of Lion, there are some subtle differences to setting up a local MAMP (Mac OS X, Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment compared to Snow Leopard. In an effort to keep this from being overly wordy and just get to the good stuff, we'll dive right in, so read on to get started.

Apple OS X comes with Apache and PHP built-in but need some tweaking to work. It also does not come with MySQL. Because of this, many developers have chosen to use MacPorts, Homebrew, or MAMP to install new binaries for Apache, PHP, and MySQL. However, doing this means your system would have multiple copies of Apache and PHP on your machine, and could create conflicts depending on how your built-in tools are configured. This tutorial will show you how to get the built-in versions of Apache and PHP running with an easy to install version of MySQL.