Today I decided to do a fresh install of Mountain Lion. In order to get back to the development environment I had for php and ColdFusion I decided to try follow what sounded like the “easiest path” - thus, instead of using MacPorts to install all the apache/php stuff I decided to use MAMP. Also, instead of using Railo (whose installation could be more straight forward) I decided to install the dev version of ColdFusion 10.

MAMP installation is simple. I just rolled with the default settings and let it do it’s thing with one small exception. When it was at installation options I found a way to expand them and turn off MAMP pro. I didn’t really want to pay for the added features it might offer.

Next up I installed ColdFusion 10. Again, this was pretty straight forward. I installed things using the default settings until I got to the point where I had to add a webserver connector. After clicking “add” the form had prepopulated with the default base Apache install instead of the MAMP install. I changed the conf path to “/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache” Likewise I changed the httpd path to “/Applications/MAMP/bin/apahce2/bin/httpd” and the apachectl path to “/Applications/MAMP/bin/apache2/bin/apachectl” After that I just let it do it’s thing and before I knew it CF 10 was installed and working propertly on my MAMP stack.

I write a lot of unit tests in PHP so I need to make sure the Command Line Interface points at the same php install. This wasn’t too tricky but it took me a few minutes to figure out. First I had to update my .bash_profile to include

PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/hp/php5.4.4/bin:$PATH

export PATH


Then I restarted terminal (or you can just type . ./.bash_profile to reload your path info). To test it I typed php -v and made sure 5.4.4 showed up instead of 5.3.x or whatever the default version in Mt. Lion is.

At this point I can access my CF administrator via http://127.0.0.1/cfide/administrator, I can access the MAMP root at http://localhost/MAMP and I setup a virtual_host (or an alias if that is your bag) so I could access my development files without having to go into the MAMP htdocs root directory. Here is my httpd-vhosts.conf file:

#

# Virtual Hosts

#

# If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your

# machine you can setup VirtualHost containers for them. Most configurations

# use only name-based virtual hosts so the server doesn't need to worry about

# IP addresses. This is indicated by the asterisks in the directives below.

#

# Please see the documentation at

#

# for further details before you try to setup virtual hosts.

#

# You may use the command line option '-S' to verify your virtual host

# configuration.


#

# Use name-based virtual hosting.

#

NameVirtualHost *:80





    DocumentRoot "/Users/bill/dev/websites"

    ServerName localhost

    ServerAlias *.localhost


        Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks

        AllowOverride all

        Allow from all

        Order allow,deny






    DocumentRoot "/Users/bill/dev/cfsites"

    ServerName cfserver.com

    ServerAlias *.cfserver.com

    Alias /mxunit /Users/bill/dev/cf-libraries/mxunit


        Allow from all

        Order allow,deny




I also had to update my hosts file so that cfserver.com exists.  The hosts file is at /private/etc/hosts