Apache, MySQL & PHP on OS X Yosemite

OS X 10.10 ships with both a recent version of Apache (2.4.x), as well as PHP (5.5.x), so you’ll just have to install MySQL and go through a few steps to get everything up and running.

Apache

First, you have to create a web root in your user account:

mkdir ~/Sites

Then add a configuration for your user:

sudo tee /etc/apache2/users/$USER.conf <<EOF
<Directory "$HOME/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
EOF

Now we have to make sure that our user config above actually gets loaded:

sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/other/$USER-settings.conf <<EOF
Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
EOF

If you want to use vhosts, you’ll also have to make sure that the vhosts config gets loaded:

sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/other/$USER-settings.conf <<EOF
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
EOF

After that, configure vhosts as necessary in /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf (don’t forget to remove the examples in there).

It seems that mod_rewrite no longer gets loaded by default, so we’ll also add that to our config:

sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/other/$USER-settings.conf <<EOF
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
EOF

PHP

PHP doesn’t get loaded by default. So we’ll also add it to our config:

sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/other/$USER-settings.conf <<EOF
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
EOF

You should also configure a few settings in /etc/php.ini:

sudo tee -a /etc/php.ini <<EOF
date.timezone = "`sudo systemsetup -gettimezone | awk '{print $3}'`"
display_errors = on
error_reporting = -1
EOF

To activate these settings you have to restart Apache:

sudo apachectl restart

If you also need PEAR/PECL, follow these instructions.

MySQL

MySQL is not shipped with OS X, so we’ll have to install that manually. Instead of going for an installer package, we’ll use Homebrew. Once Homebrew is installed, installing MySQL is as simple as:

brew install mysql

If you want to start MySQL automatically, the Caveats section from the output of the following command will show you how:

brew info mysql

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