OS X 10.10 Yosemite Apache Setup: Multiple PHP Versions

Apache Setup

apachectl

$ sudo apachectl start

$ sudo apachectl stop

$ sudo apachectl restart

http://localhost

/etc/hosts

127.0.0.1
localhost

Document Root

/Library/WebServer/Documents

/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

root-owned

sudo

subl

vi

nano

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

DocumentRoot

DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

your_user

DocumentRoot "/Users/your_user/Sites"

<Directory>

<Directory "/Users/your_user/Sites">

<Directory>

AllowOverride

AllowOverride All

User & Group

Sites

_www

_www

httpd.conf

User

Group

your_user

staff

User your_user
Group staff

Create a Sites Folder

sudo apachectl restart

Sites

Sites

index.html

<h1>My User Web Root</h1>

$ mkdir ~/Sites
$ echo "<h1>My User Web Root</h1>" > ~/Sites/index.html

http://localhost

Homebrew

brew

xcode-select --install

Installation

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"[/code] 
Just follow the terminal prompts and enter your password where required. This may take a few minutes, but when complete, a quick way to ensure you have installed 
brew
 correctly,
simply type:
$ brew --version


Verification
You should probably also run the following command to ensure everything is configured correctly:
$ brew doctor


It will instruct you if you need to correct anything. If you already have brew installed, make sure you have the all the latest available brews:
$ brew update


Now you are ready to brew!

Install PHP 5.4, 5.5, 5.6
Now we have HomeBrew installed it is a simple procedure to install PHP. We will proceed by installing both PHP 5.4, PHP 5.5, and PHP 5.6 and using
a simple script to switch between them as we need. First though we have to
tap
 into the PHP formulas and run
the following commands.

You can get a full list of available options to include by typing 
brew info php54
, for example. In this example
we are just including MySQL support (required for Joomla, WordPress, etc.)

$ brew tap homebrew/dupes
$ brew tap homebrew/versions
$ brew tap homebrew/homebrew-php
$ brew install php54
$ brew install php55
$ brew install php56


This may take some time as your computer is actually compiling Apache.

NOTE: If you get an error during compilation: 
configure: error: Cannot find OpenSSL's <evp.h>
 you need to reinstall
your Xcode command line tools with: 
xcode-select --install


Also, you may have the need to tweak configuration settings of PHP to your needs. A common thing to change is the memory setting, or the 
date.timezone
 configuration.
The 
php.ini
 files for each version of PHP are located in the following directories:
/usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/5.5/php.ini
/usr/local/etc/php/5.6/php.ini


Apache Setup
You have successfully installed your PHP versions, but we need to tell Apache to use them. You will again need to edit the 
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
 file
and search for 
#LoadModule php5_module
. You will notice that this is line is commented out. We can ignore it
because this is pointing to the version of PHP that came with OS X. Below the other 
LoadModule
 lines, add this:
# Brew PHP LoadModule
LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/opt/php54/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so


This will tell Apache to use PHP 5.4 to handle PHP requests. We will add the ability to switch PHP versions later.

You should also take this time to uncomment the 
mod_rewrite.so
 module definition so that it will be available:
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so


Let's restart Apache again, now that we have installed PHP:
$ sudo apachectl restart


Validating PHP Installation
The best way to test if PHP is installed and running as expected is to make use of phpinfo(). This is not
something you want to leave on a production machine, but it's invaluable in a development environment.

Simply create a file called 
info.php
 in your 
Sites/
 folder
you created earlier. In that file, just enter the line:
<?php phpinfo();


Point your browser to 
http://localhost/info.php
 and you should see a shiny PHP information page:



If you see a similar phpinfo result, congratulations! You now have Apache and PHP running successfully.

PHP Switcher Script
We hard-coded Apache to use PHP 5.4, but we really want to be able to switch between versions. Luckily, some industrious individual has already done the hard work for us and written a very handy little PHP
switcher script.

It is useful to have a your own local 
bin
 folder in your home directory. We will create one and setup the 
sphp
script:
$ mkdir -p ~/bin/
$ curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conradkleinespel/sphp-osx/master/sphp > ~/bin/sphp
$ chmod +x ~/bin/sphp


Update Your Path
Now we want to ensure this script is easily found when we are in the terminal, so we need add our
/Users/your_user/bin
 directory
to our path, as well as putting HomeBrew's preferred 
/usr/local/bin
 and
/usr/local/sbin
 before
OS X's default 
/usr/bin
 folder. Depending on your shell your using, you may need to add this line to 
~/.profile
, 
~/.bash_profile
,
or 
~/.zshrc
.

We will assume you are using the default bash shell, so add this line to a your 
.profile
 (create it if it doesn't
exist) file at the root of your user directory:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH:/Users/your_user/bin


Replace your_user with your actual user account. E.g. 
/Users/joeschmo/bin


At this point, I strongly recommend closing ALL your terminal tabs and windows. This will mean opening a new terminal to continue with the next step. This is strongly recommended because some really strange path issues can
arise with existing terminals (trust me, I have seen it!).

You can double-check and ensure your path has been updated to put the 
/usr/local
 paths first with the following
command:
$ echo $PATH


Apache Setup - Take 2
Although we configured Apache to use PHP earlier, we now need to change this again to point the PHP module to a location used by the PHP switcher script. You will again need to edit the 
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
 file
and search for the 
Brew PHP
 text that you added earlier. Change the 
LoadModule
 line,
to this:
# Brew PHP LoadModule
LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/lib/libphp5.so


IMPORTANT: Switch to your PHP 5.4 version with the 
sphp
 switch command :
$ sphp 54

PHP version 54 found
Unlinking old binaries...
Linking new binaries...
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.32... 37 symlinks created
Linking new modphp addon...
Updating version file...
Restarting Apache...
Done.


Let's restart Apache again now we have installed linked the PHP load module:
$ sudo apachectl restart


Testing the PHP Switching
After you have completed these steps, you should be able to switch your php version by using the command:
$ sphp 55


You will probably have to enter your administrator password, and it should give you some feedback:
PHP version 55 found
Unlinking old binaries...
Linking new binaries...
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.18... 38 symlinks created
Linking new modphp addon...
Updating version file...
Restarting Apache...
Done.


Test to see if your Apache is now running PHP 5.5 by again pointing your browser to 
http://localhost/info.php
.
With a little luck, you should see something like this:




Updating PHP and other Brew Packages
Brew makes it super easy to update PHP and the other packages you install. The first step is to update Brew so that it gets a list of available updates:
$ brew update


This will spit out a list of available updates, and any deleted formulas. To upgrade the packages simply type:
$ brew update


You will need to switch to each of your installed PHP versions and run update again to get updates for each PHP version and ensure you are running the version of PHP you intend.


Activating Specific/Latest PHP Versions
Due to the way our PHP linking is set up, only one version of PHP is linked at a time, only the current activeversion of PHP will be updated to the latest version. You can see the current
active version by typing:
$ php -v


And you can see the specific versions of PHP available by typing:
$ brew info php55
brew info php55
php55: stable 5.5.23 (bottled), HEAD https://php.net /usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.18 (493 files,  40M)
Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.19 (493 files,  40M)
Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.20 (493 files,  40M)
Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.21 (493 files,  40M)
Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.22 (494 files,  40M)
Built from source
/usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.23 (497 files,  50M) *
Poured from bottle
...


You will see all the versions of PHP 5.5 brew has available, with the active one have an asterisk (*)after it and then you can switch to a specific version by typing:
$ brew switch php55 5.5.21


OK, that wraps up Part 1 of this 2 part series You now have a fully functional Apache 2.4 installation with a quick-and-easy way to toggle between PHP 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6. Check
out Part 2 to find out how to setup your environment with MySQL, Virtual Hosts, APC caching, and Xdebug.