Akra’s DevNotes

I've installed Zend Server CE on my Mac to see where it's got to and it's looking quite usable. The installation puts everything into the usr/local/zend directory which is fairly well laid out so that you can find what you are looking for. There's also a a nice admin system at http://localhost:10081 which allows you to restart PHP, view phpinfo(), configure extensions and php.ini. There's also a phpMyAdmin to help administer the bundled MySQL server.

For Mac, this is now one of the better one stop shops for easy PHP & MySQL installation.

Obviously, some things need configuration:

Set up paths

You need access to the command line zendctl.sh and mysql tools:

• Edit ~/.bash_profile and add:

      PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/zend/bin:/usr/local/zend/mysql/bin
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/zend/lib
  

• Close Terminal and restart it so that your change takes effect.

Change to port 80

The Apache in Zend Server is configured for 10088 to avoid conflicting with Apple's Web Sharing I suppose. The choice of using port 80 would have been nice as an installation option though.

To use port 80 is easy enough:

• Stop Apache: sudo zendctl.sh stop-apache
• Edit /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf and replace Listen 10088 with Listen 80
• Edit /usr/local/zend/apache2/bin/apachectl and change STATUSURL="http://localhost:10088/server-status" to STATUSURL="http://localhost:80/server-status"
• If you are using vhosts, then edit /usr/local/zend/apaches/conf/httpd.conf and replace all instances 10088 with 80
• Restart Apache:sudo zendctl.sh start-apache

Installing PHPUnit

Update PEAR first:

    sudo pear channel-update pear.php.net
    sudo pear upgrade-all

Install PHPUnit:

    sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
    sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

Installing Xdebug

• Install Xcode so you have a compiler!
• Stop Apache: sudo zendctl.sh stop-apache
• Go to http://localhost:10081/ and pick the Server Setup tab. Turn off the Zend Debugger and Zend Data Cache and restart PHP
• sudo pecl install xdebug
• Edit /usr/local/zend/etc/php.ini and add above the [zend] section near the bottom:

  zend_extension="/usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions/xdebug.so" 
  
  [xdebug]
  xdebug.remote_enable=1
  xdebug.remote_host="localhost"
  xdebug.remote_port=9000
  xdebug.show_local_vars=On
  xdebug.var_display_max_data=10000
  xdebug.var_display_max_depth=20
  

  (you should set up your xdebug settings as you require!)

• Restart Apache:sudo zendctl.sh start-apache
• The Server Setup->Extensions section of the admin interface should now show xdebug.

All in all, it's remarkably easy to set up Zend Server using PEAR and PECL is which how it should be.

The only other gotcha I noticed is that my.cnf is in /usr/local/zend/mysql/data whereas I would have thought that /usr/local/zend/etc would have been more logical.

In the vein of some of Lorna's articles, this is more a note for myself than anything else. Not everything is explained in detail as it assumes you know how to use a command line...

These are the steps I take to get the Apple supplied PHP working with GD, PDO_MySQL and Xdebug working on OS X 10.5.

/usr/local

Ensure that the following directories exist:

    sudo mkdir /usr/local/include
    sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin
    sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib
    sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/man/man1

Run Apache in 32 bit mode

This saves us having to compile our own MySQL as MySQL doesn't offer a "fat" binary

1. cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
2. sudo vim org.apache.httpd.plist
3. Immediately after the line containing <array> add:

       <string>arch</string>
       <string>-i386</string>
   

4. Reboot

MySQL

1. Download the 32bit version of MySQL 5.0.x for OS X 10.5 from mysql.com and install the pkg, the startup item and the pref pane.
2. Add /usr/local/mysql/bin to the path: vim ~/.bash_profile and add:

       export PATH=~/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH
       export EDITOR=vim
   

   at top of file. (Note that we set EDITOR whilst we are here so that svn is happy!)

3. Set up MySQL root password:

       mysqladmin -u root password {new-password}
       mysqladmin -u root -p{new-password} -h localhost password {new-password}
       mysqladmin -u root -p reload
   

   Quit Terminal to flush the history to file. Restart Terminal and remove the history file: rm .bash_history so that {new-password} isn't in plain text on the disk.

4. Set the correct socket information for PHP. Ensure MySQL is running via the System Preferences panel then:

       sudo mkdir /var/mysql
       sudo ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock
   

Rest of Apache setup

1. cd /etc/apache2
2. sudo vim httpd.conf
3. Find #LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so and remove the leading #
4. Find AllowOverride None within the <Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">section and change toAllowOverride All so that .htaccess files will work.
5. Restart Apache: sudo apachectl restart
6. Open Finder and navigate to /Library/WebServer/Documents/
7. Create a new folder called "orig" and place all files currently in the Documents folder into it.
8. Create a new file called info.php with <?php phpinfo(); inside it.
9. Use Safari to navigate to http://localhost/info.php and check that the PHP version is displayed (5.2.6 at the time of writing).

php.ini

1. cd /etc
2. sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini
3. sudo chmod ug+w php.ini
4. sudo chgrp admin php.ini
5. vim php.ini (assuming your user is a member of the admin group) and change settings appropriately. Change:

       error_reporting  =  E_ALL | E_STRICT
       extension_dir = "/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613"
   

   You must set the extension dir correctly. (Commenting the line out also works...)

PHP extensions

The supplied PHP doesn't come with pdo_mysql, pear or gd, so fix it.

1. Download the correct version of PHP from http://www.php.net/releases/. (5.2.6 at time of writing)
2. Create a directory called src in your home directory and unpack the PHP source. This creates /Users/rob/src/php-5.2.6/ in my case.

pdo_mysql

1. cd ~/src/php-5.2.6/ext/pdo_mysql.
2. phpize
3. MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 \
   CFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386' \
   LDFLAGS='-O3 -arch i386' \
   CXXFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386' \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
4. make
5. sudo make install
6. Edit /etc/php.ini and find the extension_dir line and add after it:

       extension=mysql.so

7. Restart apache: sudo apachectl restart and check in the phpinfo that pdo_mysql is now loaded.

GD

Installing GD onto the stock PHP install that is supplied with OS X is slightly more complicated than you'd expect because you need to install libjpeg first.

Libjpeg

Libjpeg is available from the Independent JPEG Group.

1. Download the source code: http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
2. extract to ~/src
3. cd ~/src/jpeg-6b
4. cp /usr/share/libtool/config.* .
5. ./configure --enable-shared
6. sudo make install
7. Libjpeg is now installed in /usr/local/lib

GD extension

1. cd ~/src/php-5.2.6/ext/gd
2. phpize
3. MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 \
   CFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386' \
   LDFLAGS='-O3 -arch i386' \
   CXXFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386' \
   ./configure --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-png-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-freetype-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6
4. make
5. sudo make install
6. Edit /etc/php.ini and find the extension_dir line and add after it:

       extension=gd.so

7. Restart apache: sudo apachectl restart and check in the phpinfo that GD is now loaded.

PEAR

1. cd ~/src/.
2. curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear > go-pear.php
3. Accept defaults, except for installation prefix (1) should be /usr/local
4. Check that the include_path in /etc/php.ini is correct and includes the PEAR directory (/usr/local/PEAR).

Xdebug

Can't have a PHP development environment without xdebug!

1. sudo pecl install xdebug
2. Edit /etc/php.ini and add

       zend_extension="/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so"

   after the other extension lines.

3. Restart apache: sudo apachectl restart and check in the phpinfo that xdebug is now loaded.

PHPUnit

1. sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
2. sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

It all works on this machines, anyway :)

Updatesee Marc Liyanage's PHP5 packages

To uninstall MySQL and completely remove it from you Mac do the following:

• sudo rm /usr/local/mysql
• sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql*
• sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
• sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My*
• edit /etc/hostconfig and remove the line MYSQLCOM=-YES-
• sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*
• sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL*

The last two lines are particularly important as otherwise, you can't install an older version of MySQL even though you think that you've completely deleted the newer version!

As I mentioned a while ago, I'm now using a MacBook Pro. All is going well, and I like Mail.app's search and data detectors very much. There are some niggles though that I miss from Thunderbird. My top 3 are:

* GPG integration (Thunderbird's Enigmail)
* Mail.app's insistence on attached PDFs and images inline
* Filing mails to arbitrary folders using the keyboard (Thunderbird's nostalgy)

It turns out that there are solutions to all three issues for OS X's Mail.app:

* GPGMail from Sente. (Not for Leopard, yet though)
* Mail Attachments Iconizer from Lokiware
* MsgFiler from tow.

I had found GPGMail a while ago and I"m looking forward to the Leopard release. In the meantime, I am getting by using the Services->GPG menu. I only learnt about the other two by accident.

Lokiware is sponsoring the Daring Fireball RSS feed this week and John Gruber's write up about this event, pointed at Dan Frakes’s Macworld article which not only persuaded me to download Mail Attachments Iconizer also mentioned MsgFiler too.

I've bought both! Clearly sponsoring DF's RSS feed is worthwhile :)

Now, I'm trying to decide if I should buy Yojimbo...

Cal Evans has announced a cure for Blank Stare Syndrome!

You know the problem: you're in a conversation and someone mentions something about a new technology that you haven't heard of. Your eyes glaze and you have that Blank Stare...

Sixty Second Tech is the solution. Once a week, it will deliver a short podcast (presumably about 60 seconds long!) that explains one technological concept per episode that you (or your less-techy friends!) need to know.

Head on over there and subscribe to the RSS Feed now - or wait for it to turn up on iTunes shortly.

One of the apps that I've found that I'm using daily is TaskPaper from Hog Bay Software. It's a brilliantly simple idea where all it does is format up a standard text file to make it easier to use as a todo list.

You just start each item with a dash and it will automatically provide a checkbox next to the item. When you tick the checkbox, then a tag, @done, is added to the end of the line and it is crossed out. To aid organisation, any title that ends in a colon is automatically made bold and considered a project. Tags start with a @ symbol and can be used for filtering. For instance, you can get it to display all tasks with the tag of @town to provide a list of items to be done when you next go into town.

All in all, TaskPaper is very simple and very easy to use. You start it up and you can get going straight away.

Obviously, there are a few niggles! Three that I've noticed are:

• Dragging and dropping of tasks to reorder isn't as smooth as it could be as TaskPaper tends to put the task you are moving into the same line as the task you are trying to insert above.
• If I've completed all sub-tasks, it would be nice if it automatically marked the parent task as done too. In reverse, it would be handy if it would auto-mark-done all child tasks when I mark their parent task as done.
• The context menu contains items that don't make sense, such as font and colours.

Niggles, really is the word, isn't it?! I need to stress the application more so that I can find an important thing to complain about!

Hog Bay Software is run by Jesse, who is a really nice guy as he even answered my emailed bug report even though I was just a trial user. I've since bought the product as to my mind it's well worth the money.

I'm now looking for a "diary" type program that will present me with a blank page every day automatically. Bonus points if it allows tagging of pages to help me find stuff I've stored and I'd also like it to store its files in RTF files or similar so that I can take them to Pages with no hassle. So far, I've looked at Journler, Jotter and MacJournal so far, but all require me to start a new entry manually.

Another one to chalk up to a doh! moment...

I'm checking out my wife's website to my new MacBook and get this error message:

svn: In directory 'website/gallery/piccies'
svn: Can't move source to dest
svn: Can't move 'website/gallery/piccies/.svn/tmp/prop-base/IMG_0013-thumb.jpg.svn-base' to 'website/gallery/piccies/.svn/prop-base/IMG_0013-thumb.jpg.svn-base': No such file or directory

I'm pretty sure that there's no problem with the subversion repository as I've been using it for months with no problem so I asked a friend to check it out on his Windows box... which failed with the same error. We thought at first that linux was allowing something illegal to occur which Windows and Macs weren't. Then we thought about the other differences between Linux and Windows/Mac OS X.

After a while. It turns out that there are two files in the directory: IMG_0013.jpg and IMG_0013.JPG. One svn mv command later and the problem is solved.

It would have been nice to have had a better error message though!

A couple of days after Leopard came out, my wife and I found ourselves in the Apple store in Solihull and came away with an iMac for her and a MacBook Pro for me.

The main reasons we have been interested in Macs recently are:

• Disappointed with Vista on my wife's brand new computer
• Disappointed with our last two Inspiron laptops
• Sleep that works
• The hardware looks good!
• Unix in the terminal

Interestingly, the biggest benefit we've noticed since purchase is how quiet they are. We didn't realise how noisy those PCs under the desk actually were til we got rid of them.

The biggest challenge has been adapting to the keyboard. The @, " and \ keys in particular are in the "wrong" place, and carat navigation is maddeningly inconsistent between applications. I've worked out that Option+left/right move per word and command+left/right is supposed to move to the start/end of the line. Command+up/down usually moves to the top and bottom of the document, but I haven't found page up/down yet but suspect it has something to do with function option and up,down left or right!

We haven't worked out when we need to quit applications vs just closing the window which leaves the app running.

PHP 5.2.4 was installed by Apple and just needed turning on in httpd.conf (it's in /etc... did I mention how nice having Unix underneath is?!) What's odd is that PDO isn't there and so I suspect that I'm going to have to compile my own PHP at some point.