An OS X Drupal development environment with Homebrew

Submitted by Jeff Beeman on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 16:55

This is a collection of notes I took while setting up a Drupal-ready Apache / MySQL / PHP environment on OS X using Homebrew and PEAR / PECL. I believe it should work to recreate an environment from scratch, but I've not run through the notes from start to finish on a fresh environment to validate. Hopefully this will help you get your own environment up and running easily!

Note: Mark Sonnabaum's Megalodon might be of interest to you, as well. For me, it involved learning a few too many things, and I also wanted as much as possible in my environment to be handled via a package manager like Homebrew or PEAR.

Update: Per Mark, Megalodon does entirely use Homebrew and Chef, I just misunderstood it. I look forward to seeing what I can do with it, once I dig in and understand it a bit more.

Update: Thanks, @stevepurkiss, for pointing out the typo on the first line for brew tap... That's been fixed!

Update: Thanks, @cashwilliams, for pointing out some issues with the my.cnf and order of packages being installed. I've updated a couple of the instructions below to reflect his findings.

Update: I've added instructions for initial setup of Drupal coding standards for PHP Code Sniffer.

TODOs

  • Write a small script that stops / starts all the services we install. Then, remove the auto-start bits (e.g. launchctl)

Install Homebrew and various packages

http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

brew tap homebrew/dupes
brew tap josegonzalez/homebrew-php
brew install mysql
brew install graphviz
brew install memcached
brew install php53 --with-mysql
brew install php53-xhprof php53-xdebug php53-uploadprogress php53-apc php53-memcache

Update ~/.profile to use new PHP

PHP_PATH="$(brew --prefix php53)/bin"
export PATH=$PHP_PATH:$PATH

Setup MySQL

unset TMPDIR
mysql_install_db --verbose --user=`whoami` --basedir="$(brew --prefix mysql)" --datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --tmpdir=/tmp
mysql.server start
$(brew --prefix mysql)/bin/mysql_secure_installation
mysql.server stop
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp $(brew --prefix mysql)/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

Setup memcached

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/memcached/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.memcached.plist

Setup PHP

Create a PHP-specific log area.

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/php
sudo chmod -R ugo+rw /var/log/php

Update /usr/local/etc/php/5.3/php.ini with some defaults.

error_log = /var/log/php/php.log
date.timezone = "America/Phoenix"

Install additional pear libraries

pear config-set auto_discover 1
pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit
pear install pear.netpirates.net/phpDox-0.4.0

Setup Drupal coding standards for PHP Code Sniffer

pear install PHP_CodeSniffer
cd ~/Projects/drupal
drush dl --package-handler=git_drupalorg coder
sudo ln -sv /Users/jbeeman/Projects/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer/Drupal $(pear config-get php_dir)/PHP/CodeSniffer/Standards/Drupal

Fix sendmail

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Server/Mail/Data/spool
sudo /usr/sbin/postfix set-permissions
sudo /usr/sbin/postfix start

Update Apache config to load new PHP

/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Note: You'll want to change [username] to your user name.

/etc/apache2/httpd.confLoadModule php5_module    /usr/local/Cellar/php53/5.3.18/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
...
# Virtual hosts
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Include /Users/[username]/Library/VirtualHosts/*.vhost

MySQL config

Create /etc/mysql/my.cnf

sudo mkdir -p /etc/mysql
sudo touch /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Add some default settings:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8
 
[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8
 
[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=InnoDB
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8
 
# Performance tuning
max_allowed_packet = 128M
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 160M
join_buffer_size = 4M
tmp_table_size = 64M
max_heap_table_size = 64M
sort_buffer_size = 6M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 4M
key_buffer = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
thread_stack = 256K
thread_cache_size = 8
table_cache = 16
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2
query_cache_limit = 4M
query_cache_size = 128M

Setup a new VirtualHost

Add a vhost file: ~/Sites/Library/VirtualHosts/drupal-demo.vhost

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName drupal-demo.localhost
  DocumentRoot /Users/jbeeman/Sites/drupal-demo
  <Directory /Users/jbeeman/Sites/drupal-demo>
    Options All
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/drupal-demo_error.log
  CustomLog /var/log/apache2/drupal-demo_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Add the local domain to /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1     drupal.localhost

References