Update: The docs below are deprecated. Please refer to these docs going forward. Also, MAMPbegone is now brewStack! Thanks to @tlattimore for providing the cool name!
I have had an on and off relationship with MAMP over the years. I love how MAMP makes it super easy to install a nice stack of web server tools in an OS X Application, but it does have its share of limitations.
- Running older version of PHP. Sometimes I would like to run a slightly newer version than is available.
- Running Apache 2.0. No Apache 2.2 love in MAMP yet.
- There isn't an easy way to add new PHP extensions. I recently needed XMLRPC and had to track down a binary from the Moodle community. Another example is intl. I needed that for some recent Symfony work.
- Pear doesn't always work out of the box without some fixes.
- While it is open source, if I have to compile much to fix MAMP, I might as well compile PHP from CLI from source as I did for years prior to using MAMP.
I do appreciate MAMP! It is great and I still recommend it for anyone who can live within its feature set and limitations. I often recommend it for new Drupal users. MAMP allows them to get started very quickly.
As I mentioned above, I have also spent a bit of my development life compiling Apache and/or PHP from source to build local development environments. This is something that I don't want to do again. So what do I want? I want to have a local development evironment with the following characteristics:
- Easy to install and configure
- Easy to upgrade
- Easy to extend (Adding new PHP extensions or upgrading PHP)
- php-cgi for use with Drush qd
- Secure
- Easy setup for virtual hosts and changes to the /etc/hosts file. I can, but don't need to spend the time configuring this by hand all the time!
- Lastly, this needs to support my Drupal and Symfony development needs! I have included some additional bits I use, such as drush and Composer.
