Compile your own PHP version from source and install it on MAMP PRO on macOS. It's possible -- despite what MAMP's developers want you to believe.
If MAMP PRO is stating that another process is running on your Apache/Nginx port, then you can test this using the commmand line. Type the following into the terminal, sudo lsof -i:80 # checks port 80, and then press “Return”. If the port is free, nothing should be returned. MAMP & MAMP PRO 6.3 macOS 10.12+ & 64-Bit processor (Intel) Users of version 5 get more than 50% discount. MAMP & MAMP PRO 4.2.0 Windows 7, 8.1, 10 Download MAMP Viewer. MySQL no longer wrongly reports failed starts. Redis starts more reliably when using the 'redis' user account. Editor Fixed an auto layout bug on Mac OS X 10.10; No longer crashes when opening a file in a new window; MAMP PRO can now start the update of the complete MAMP package. Automatically created snapshots now have 'auto' in.
I wanted to test my software against PHP 7.3 on macOS instead of just my Linux machines and / or Docker containers. According to MAMP's support 'You cannot compile your own entire versions of PHP in MAMP PRO'. This is of course a ridiculous lie; they do it themselves so surely I can! This article walks you step by step to my process of adding PHP 7.3.0 to MAMP 5.2 on this lazy Saturday afternoon.
Caveats
'It's possible' does not mean 'it's easy'. This procedure is not for the faint of heart, if you don't have experience building stuff from source (and troubleshoot cryptic compile error message) or if you're in a mad dash to deliver software. You will stumble. You will fall. You will curse at your computer. You will be frustrated. You will be searching online cryptic error messages only to find a million pages from five years ago which do not apply. YOU WILL SUFFER. Is it worth it? Hell yeah. That's how you get to learn stuff. If you want quick results just wait a few months for MAMP PRO to include a new version of PHP. It will save you time, money and frustration (and keep you blissfully unaware of the gruesome process of compiling software from scratch). Proceed at your own risk and peril.
Appsolute, the makers of MAMP, make it unnecessarily complicated – read: impossible – to compile your own Apache modules by not shipping the build headers for Apache. Therefore we are only building PHP CLI and CGI/FastCGI, not as an Apache module. This is not a big deal, though. The recommended way to run PHP 5.3 and later is through FastCGI. Just select the 'Individual PHP version for every host (CGI mode)' option. FastCGI is also the only way PHP works on NginX.
Likewise, they do not ship build headers for anything except PHP itself – definitely not for any of the build dependencies. We are going to use Homebrew to install the required PHP build dependencies. The actual caveat is that you can't just pluck the compiled PHP from your computer and install it on your mate's. Not unless you also install the dependencies outlined below with Homebrew.
I compiled most PHP modules but I left some out because I don't use them and don't have the time to troubleshoot their build dependencies. This should not be an issue for most people.
Finally, you will need to edit your PHP version's php.ini template file and manually enable additional PHP extensions. Unlike MAMP, I try to build most of the extensions as 'shared', i.e. you have to load them through php.ini. I sometimes need to disable stuff to see if my code fails gracefully.
Prerequisites
I have two Macs at my disposal. One Mac Mini which was upgraded from macOS Sierra to High Sierra to Mojave; and a MacBook Pro which was freshly installed with Mojave. I used the former to come up with the instructions and the second, 'virgin' machine to verify that everything works. If you get compilation errors check what you have installed in Homebrew and where you have linked it to. This is the source of all problems and please don't ask me to help you; just like you, I search the error message I am getting and plow through the results until I find something which seems like a promising solution. OK. Let's get started, then!
Mamp Pro Discount
Before you begin your quest to a custom PHP version in MAMP you need a sane build environment with all the PHP dependencies installed.
First, install XCode from the App Store. This is Apple's all-in-one development package which includes system headers and the all important build toolchain (C compiler, automake, autoconf and so on and so forth).
Now open XCode and accept the license. It will take a while. This is the part where XCode installs the software and header files we need to build PHP. If you forget to do that you will get compilation errors when building PHP. After it's done installing you can quit XCode. We don't need the actual application running.
Apple has made it unnecessarily complicated to build software from the command line by tucking away all of the libraries and headers in a non-standard folder. For macOS Mojave you need to run this from a Terminal
Mamp Pro Redis Extension
This puts everything into the standard folders, e.g. /usr/include. Please check that you have the /usr/include folder after running this command. If you don't, PHP compilation WILL fail and you'll spend two hours trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Been there. Obviously, if you do not have Mojave you need to replace the 10.14 in the command above with your macOS version number.
Next up, install Homebrew. If you're not absolutely new to macOS you already know about it. For everyone else, Homebrew is the de facto package manager for macOS. It allows us to install and upgrade libraries and tools in a simple and sensible manner. Follow the instructions on the link above to install Homebrew. At the time of this writing (December 2018) you need to open Terminal and enter:
Now we will have to install the dependencies for building PHP and a bunch of its extensions. Open a Terminal and enter the following:
Please note that I have only tried compiling PHP 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3. If you are compiling an older or newer version of PHP you may have to add more build dependencies.
MAMP's directory structure

Let's pause for a second and understand what we are doing. MAMP stores its files in several different places. These locations are not documented but they are not that hard to reverse engineer.
Every PHP version is stored in /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/phpX.Y.Z where X.Y.Z is your PHP version. Major caveat, X, Y and Z must all be integers without anything else. This means you cannot install alphas, betas or RC versions unless you lie. For example, if you were to install PHP 7.3.0RC6 you'd be installing it as php7.3.0. Anyway. This folder contains a mostly standard PHP installation folder layout. The exceptions are two directories.
The /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/phpX.Y.Z/conf folder contains the pear.conf file (which we don't use), the default php.ini file (which is not used) and the default php.ini.temp MAMP-specific template file (which is NOT used). This folder must exist but its contents are not used during MAMP's regular operation, they are only used when MAMP is installing a new PHP version.
The /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/phpX.Y.Z/modules folder is where MAMP expects to find the PHP Apache module file (libphp7.so). Major caveat! If the file does not exist MAMP will not show this PHP version in its interface. But we can't build that file. So... are we screwed? Well, no. We can just create a zero byte file and MAMP will work happily.
There's another important location: /Users/your_user/Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/templates/phpX.Y.Z.ini.temp. This is the MAMP-specific php.ini template file you edit through MAMP's File, Edit Template, PHP (php.ini) submenu. This file is parsed when MAMP is starting the servers, creating the real php.ini file in /Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/conf/phpX.Y.Z.ini. Note that the REAL file is in /Library, NOT /Users/your_user/Library.
Remember the location of the real, generated php.ini file when you want to call PHP from the command line. If you do not specify this configuration file with the -c switch then the default /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/phpX.Y.Z/conf/php.ini file will be used instead which is NOT the one you configure through MAMP PRO's interface! That is, call PHP CLI as:
Compile your own PHP version
Go ahead and download the PHP version you want from the official PHP site. I downloaded and extracted PHP 7.3.0 inside ~/php, a subfolder I created for this reason.
You can blindly use the following code in Terminal changing just the first line. Replace 7.3.0 with your PHP version.
Tip: The make commands have a -j 8 switch. This means 'run up to 8 tasks in parallel'. That's because I have a Mac Mini with a 4-core Intel Core i7 processor with Hyperthreading. This means each core can run two threads at the same time, thus 4 cores x 2 threads per core = 8 threads simultaneously. If you have a dual-core processor, as in with most MacBook Pro and Air machines, set this to -j 4. Note that this utilises your processor optimally, reduces the compilation time but will make your Mac run hot.
At this point you need to stop MAMP's servers, quit MAMP PRO completely and then start it again. Now go to the PHP tab. Here's your new PHP version!
Before you get all too excited you should go to File, Edit Template, PHP (php.ini) and select your PHP version. You need to edit the extension=... lines. You can find the extensions you have compiled under the /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php7.3.0/lib/php/20180731 folder. Remember that 7.3.0 and 20180731 in that path depend on which PHP version you have compiled. You are interested only in the .so files.
My section of extension loads looks like this:
Note that all of the extensions controlled by MAMP are actually not built since they are either not part of the PHP distribution (they are installed through PECL) or I didn't bother building them. You will see how to build them in the next section.
Compiling additional PHP extensions
You can do that by typing the following in Terminal (change the first line to reflect your PHP version):
Now on the same Terminal session you can install PHP extensions using pecl install
. For example:
or
For some extensions you need to pass an explicit version number. For example, for the all important XDebug debugging extension you need to run:
Some extensions may need prerequisites to be installed. For example:
At the time of this writing not all PHP extensions are compatible with PHP 7.3. I was unable to compile memcached, apc, apcu and ssh2. That's what you get for trying the bleeding edge. This is also my response to the people asking 'why are you not using PHP 7.3 in production yet?'. It's simply not ready if you rely on certain extensions. That's why there's an overlap of actively maintained releases, to give time to developers to adapt their extensions and PHP software developers to test before migrating to an infrastructure of unknown compatibility status. That's the whole point of self-compiling the very latest PHP version: get our software ready.
- # Note on units: when memory size is needed, it is possible to specifiy
- #
- # 1kb => 1024 bytes
- # 1mb => 1024*1024 bytes
- # 1gb => 1024*1024*1024 bytes
- # units are case insensitive so 1GB 1Gb 1gB are all the same.
- # By default Redis does not run as a daemon. Use 'yes' if you need it.
- # Note that Redis will write a pid file in /var/run/redis.pid when daemonized.
- # When running daemonized, Redis writes a pid file in /var/run/redis.pid by
- # default. You can specify a custom pid file location here.
- # Accept connections on the specified port, default is 6379.
- # If port 0 is specified Redis will not listen on a TCP socket.
- # If you want you can bind a single interface, if the bind option is not
- # specified all the interfaces will listen for incoming connections.
- # bind 127.0.0.1
- # Specify the path for the unix socket that will be used to listen for
- # incoming connections. There is no default, so Redis will not listen
- #
- # Close the connection after a client is idle for N seconds (0 to disable)
- # it can be one of:
- # debug (a lot of information, useful for development/testing)
- # verbose (many rarely useful info, but not a mess like the debug level)
- # notice (moderately verbose, what you want in production probably)
- # warning (only very important / critical messages are logged)
- # Specify the log file name. Also 'stdout' can be used to force
- # Redis to log on the standard output. Note that if you use standard
- # output for logging but daemonize, logs will be sent to /dev/null
- # To enable logging to the system logger, just set 'syslog-enabled' to yes,
- # and optionally update the other syslog parameters to suit your needs.
- syslog-ident redis
- # Specify the syslog facility. Must be USER or between LOCAL0-LOCAL7.
- # Set the number of databases. The default database is DB 0, you can select
- # a different one on a per-connection basis using SELECT <dbid> where
- databases 16
- ################################ SNAPSHOTTING #################################
- # Save the DB on disk:
- # save <seconds> <changes>
- # Will save the DB if both the given number of seconds and the given
- # number of write operations against the DB occurred.
- # In the example below the behaviour will be to save:
- # after 900 sec (15 min) if at least 1 key changed
- # after 300 sec (5 min) if at least 10 keys changed
- #
- # Note: you can disable saving at all commenting all the 'save' lines.
- save 9001
- save 6010000
- # Compress string objects using LZF when dump .rdb databases?
- # For default that's set to 'yes' as it's almost always a win.
- # If you want to save some CPU in the saving child set it to 'no' but
- # the dataset will likely be bigger if you have compressible values or keys.
- dbfilename dump.rdb
- # The working directory.
- # The DB will be written inside this directory, with the filename specified
- # above using the 'dbfilename' configuration directive.
- # Also the Append Only File will be created inside this directory.
- # Note that you must specify a directory here, not a file name.
- ################################# REPLICATION #################################
- # Master-Slave replication. Use slaveof to make a Redis instance a copy of
- # another Redis server. Note that the configuration is local to the slave
- # so for example it is possible to configure the slave to save the DB with a
- # different interval, or to listen to another port, and so on.
- # slaveof <masterip> <masterport>
- # If the master is password protected (using the 'requirepass' configuration
- # directive below) it is possible to tell the slave to authenticate before
- # starting the replication synchronization process, otherwise the master will
- #
- # When a slave lost the connection with the master, or when the replication
- # is still in progress, the slave can act in two different ways:
- # 1) if slave-serve-stale-data is set to 'yes' (the default) the slave will
- # still reply to client requests, possibly with out of data data, or the
- # data set may just be empty if this is the first synchronization.
- # 2) if slave-serve-stale data is set to 'no' the slave will reply with
- # an error 'SYNC with master in progress' to all the kind of commands
- #
- ################################## SECURITY ###################################
- # Require clients to issue AUTH <PASSWORD> before processing any other
- # commands. This might be useful in environments in which you do not trust
- # others with access to the host running redis-server.
- # This should stay commented out for backward compatibility and because most
- # people do not need auth (e.g. they run their own servers).
- # Warning: since Redis is pretty fast an outside user can try up to
- # 150k passwords per second against a good box. This means that you should
- # use a very strong password otherwise it will be very easy to break.
- # requirepass foobared
- # Command renaming.
- # It is possilbe to change the name of dangerous commands in a shared
- # environment. For instance the CONFIG command may be renamed into something
- # of hard to guess so that it will be still available for internal-use
- #
- #
- # rename-command CONFIG b840fc02d524045429941cc15f59e41cb7be6c52
- # It is also possilbe to completely kill a command renaming it into
- #
- ################################### LIMITS ####################################
- # Set the max number of connected clients at the same time. By default there
- # is no limit, and it's up to the number of file descriptors the Redis process
- # is able to open. The special value '0' means no limits.
- # Once the limit is reached Redis will close all the new connections sending
- #
- # Don't use more memory than the specified amount of bytes.
- # When the memory limit is reached Redis will try to remove keys with an
- # EXPIRE set. It will try to start freeing keys that are going to expire
- # in little time and preserve keys with a longer time to live.
- # Redis will also try to remove objects from free lists if possible.
- # If all this fails, Redis will start to reply with errors to commands
- # that will use more memory, like SET, LPUSH, and so on, and will continue
- #
- # WARNING: maxmemory can be a good idea mainly if you want to use Redis as a
- # 'state' server or cache, not as a real DB. When Redis is used as a real
- # database the memory usage will grow over the weeks, it will be obvious if
- # it is going to use too much memory in the long run, and you'll have the time
- # to upgrade. With maxmemory after the limit is reached you'll start to get
- # errors for write operations, and this may even lead to DB inconsistency.
- # maxmemory <bytes>
- # MAXMEMORY POLICY: how Redis will select what to remove when maxmemory
- #
- # volatile-lru -> remove the key with an expire set using an LRU algorithm
- # allkeys-lru -> remove any key accordingly to the LRU algorithm
- # volatile-random -> remove a random key with an expire set
- # volatile-ttl -> remove the key with the nearest expire time (minor TTL)
- # noeviction -> don't expire at all, just return an error on write operations
- # Note: with all the kind of policies, Redis will return an error on write
- # operations, when there are not suitable keys for eviction.
- # At the date of writing this commands are: set setnx setex append
- # incr decr rpush lpush rpushx lpushx linsert lset rpoplpush sadd
- # sinter sinterstore sunion sunionstore sdiff sdiffstore zadd zincrby
- # zunionstore zinterstore hset hsetnx hmset hincrby incrby decrby
- #
- #
- # LRU and minimal TTL algorithms are not precise algorithms but approximated
- # algorithms (in order to save memory), so you can select as well the sample
- # size to check. For instance for default Redis will check three keys and
- # pick the one that was used less recently, you can change the sample size
- #
- ############################## APPEND ONLY MODE ###############################
- # By default Redis asynchronously dumps the dataset on disk. If you can live
- # with the idea that the latest records will be lost if something like a crash
- # happens this is the preferred way to run Redis. If instead you care a lot
- # about your data and don't want to that a single record can get lost you should
- # enable the append only mode: when this mode is enabled Redis will append
- # every write operation received in the file appendonly.aof. This file will
- # be read on startup in order to rebuild the full dataset in memory.
- # Note that you can have both the async dumps and the append only file if you
- # like (you have to comment the 'save' statements above to disable the dumps).
- # Still if append only mode is enabled Redis will load the data from the
- #
- # IMPORTANT: Check the BGREWRITEAOF to check how to rewrite the append
- # The name of the append only file (default: 'appendonly.aof')
- # The fsync() call tells the Operating System to actually write data on disk
- # instead to wait for more data in the output buffer. Some OS will really flush
- # data on disk, some other OS will just try to do it ASAP.
- # Redis supports three different modes:
- # no: don't fsync, just let the OS flush the data when it wants. Faster.
- # always: fsync after every write to the append only log . Slow, Safest.
- # everysec: fsync only if one second passed since the last fsync. Compromise.
- # The default is 'everysec' that's usually the right compromise between
- # speed and data safety. It's up to you to understand if you can relax this to
- # 'no' that will will let the operating system flush the output buffer when
- # it wants, for better performances (but if you can live with the idea of
- # some data loss consider the default persistence mode that's snapshotting),
- # or on the contrary, use 'always' that's very slow but a bit safer than
- #
- appendfsync everysec
- # When the AOF fsync policy is set to always or everysec, and a background
- # saving process (a background save or AOF log background rewriting) is
- # performing a lot of I/O against the disk, in some Linux configurations
- # Redis may block too long on the fsync() call. Note that there is no fix for
- # this currently, as even performing fsync in a different thread will block
- #
- # In order to mitigate this problem it's possible to use the following option
- # that will prevent fsync() from being called in the main process while a
- #
- # This means that while another child is saving the durability of Redis is
- # the same as 'appendfsync none', that in pratical terms means that it is
- # possible to lost up to 30 seconds of log in the worst scenario (with the
- #
- # If you have latency problems turn this to 'yes'. Otherwise leave it as
- # 'no' that is the safest pick from the point of view of durability.
- ################################ VIRTUAL MEMORY ###############################
- # Virtual Memory allows Redis to work with datasets bigger than the actual
- # amount of RAM needed to hold the whole dataset in memory.
- # In order to do so very used keys are taken in memory while the other keys
- # are swapped into a swap file, similarly to what operating systems do
- #
- # To enable VM just set 'vm-enabled' to yes, and set the following three
- # vm-enabled yes
- # This is the path of the Redis swap file. As you can guess, swap files
- # can't be shared by different Redis instances, so make sure to use a swap
- # file for every redis process you are running. Redis will complain if the
- #
- # The best kind of storage for the Redis swap file (that's accessed at random)
- #
- # *** WARNING *** if you are using a shared hosting the default of putting
- # the swap file under /tmp is not secure. Create a dir with access granted
- # only to Redis user and configure Redis to create the swap file there.
- # vm-max-memory configures the VM to use at max the specified amount of
- # RAM. Everything that deos not fit will be swapped on disk *if* possible, that
- # is, if there is still enough contiguous space in the swap file.
- # With vm-max-memory 0 the system will swap everything it can. Not a good
- # default, just specify the max amount of RAM you can in bytes, but it's
- # better to leave some margin. For instance specify an amount of RAM
- # that's more or less between 60 and 80% of your free RAM.
- # Redis swap files is split into pages. An object can be saved using multiple
- # contiguous pages, but pages can't be shared between different objects.
- # So if your page is too big, small objects swapped out on disk will waste
- # a lot of space. If you page is too small, there is less space in the swap
- # file (assuming you configured the same number of total swap file pages).
- # If you use a lot of small objects, use a page size of 64 or 32 bytes.
- # If you use a lot of big objects, use a bigger page size.
- vm-page-size 32
- # Number of total memory pages in the swap file.
- # Given that the page table (a bitmap of free/used pages) is taken in memory,
- # every 8 pages on disk will consume 1 byte of RAM.
- # The total swap size is vm-page-size * vm-pages
- # With the default of 32-bytes memory pages and 134217728 pages Redis will
- # use a 4 GB swap file, that will use 16 MB of RAM for the page table.
- # It's better to use the smallest acceptable value for your application,
- # but the default is large in order to work in most conditions.
- # Max number of VM I/O threads running at the same time.
- # This threads are used to read/write data from/to swap file, since they
- # also encode and decode objects from disk to memory or the reverse, a bigger
- # number of threads can help with big objects even if they can't help with
- # I/O itself as the physical device may not be able to couple with many
- #
- # The special value of 0 turn off threaded I/O and enables the blocking
- vm-max-threads 4
- ############################### ADVANCED CONFIG ###############################
- # Hashes are encoded in a special way (much more memory efficient) when they
- # have at max a given numer of elements, and the biggest element does not
- # exceed a given threshold. You can configure this limits with the following
- hash-max-zipmap-entries 512
- # Similarly to hashes, small lists are also encoded in a special way in order
- # to save a lot of space. The special representation is only used when
- list-max-ziplist-entries 512
- # Sets have a special encoding in just one case: when a set is composed
- # of just strings that happens to be integers in radix 10 in the range
- # The following configuration setting sets the limit in the size of the
- # set in order to use this special memory saving encoding.
- # Active rehashing uses 1 millisecond every 100 milliseconds of CPU time in
- # order to help rehashing the main Redis hash table (the one mapping top-level
- # keys to values). The hash table implementation redis uses (see dict.c)
- # performs a lazy rehashing: the more operation you run into an hash table
- # that is rhashing, the more rehashing 'steps' are performed, so if the
- # server is idle the rehashing is never complete and some more memory is used
- #
- # The default is to use this millisecond 10 times every second in order to
- # active rehashing the main dictionaries, freeing memory when possible.
- # If unsure:
- # use 'activerehashing no' if you have hard latency requirements and it is
- # not a good thing in your environment that Redis can reply form time to time
- #
- # use 'activerehashing yes' if you don't have such hard requirements but
- activerehashing yes
- ################################## INCLUDES ###################################
- # Include one or more other config files here. This is useful if you
- # have a standard template that goes to all redis server but also need
- # to customize a few per-server settings. Include files can include
- #
- # include /path/to/other.conf
