# Installation on Mac OS X

## Table of Contents

- Using the bundled PHP
- Compiling for OS X Server
- Compiling for MacOS X Client

This section contains notes and hints specific to installing PHP on Mac OS X. There are two slightly different versions of Mac OS X, Client and Server, our manual deals with installing PHP on both systems. Note that PHP is not available for MacOS 9 and earlier versions.

## Using Packages

There are a few pre-packaged and pre-compiled versions of PHP for Mac OS X. This can help in setting up a standard configuration, but if you need to have a different set of features (such as a secure server, or a different database driver), you may need to build PHP and/or your web server yourself. If you are unfamiliar with building and compiling your own software, it's worth checking whether somebody has already built a packaged version of PHP with the features you need.

The following resources offer easy to install packages and precompiled binaries for PHP on Mac OS:

- MacPorts: » http://www.macports.org/
- Entropy: » http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/
- Fink: » http://fink.sourceforge.net/