PHP 5.4.7 is the latest stable release of PHP. WordPress has a minimum required version of 5.2.6. Most developers aren’t using the PHP 5.4 branch. Actually, most aren’t even rocking PHP 5.3. This disgusts me.

PHP 5.3 added support for closures. If you come from the world of JavaScript, you know how useful they can be. If you have used PHP 5.3 and closures in classes, you will be happy to know that PHP 5.4 allows you to use $this in closures in class methods.

If you haven’t messed around with PHP 5.3, you can install these MacPorts to get started:

php5 +apache2+fastcgi+pear
php5-apc
php5-curl
php5-gd
php5-http
php5-iconv
php5-imagick
php5-mbstring
php5-mcrypt
php5-memcached
php5-mysql +mysqlnd
php5-openssl
php5-tidy

If you already have PHP 5.3 and want to upgrade to PHP 5.4, these are some tricks to get you on the right path:

sudo -s // use sudo mode throughout

port uninstall php5
// won't work if you have extensions installed,
// so uninstall everything that has PHP5 as a dependency first

port install php54
cd /opt/local/etc/php54 && sudo cp php.ini-development php.ini

Install a bunch of PHP extensions:

port install php54-apc php54-curl php54-gd php54-http php54-iconv php54-imagick php54-mbstring php54-mcrypt php54-memcached php54-mysql php54-openssl php54-tidy

To use mysqlnd with a local MySQL server, edit /opt/local/etc/php54/php.ini and set

mysql.default_socket, mysqli.default_socket and pdo_mysql.default_socket
to

/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock

Make sure PHP 5.4.6 is the default PHP binary:

which php

If it’s something like /usr/bin/php:

cd /usr/bin && sudo rm -rf php
sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/php54 php

You now have PHP 5.4.6 and your extensions, but you no longer have the apache variant.

port install php54-apache2handler

cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n php5 mod_php54.so

vi /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf (remove the old php5.so)

You now have PHP 5.4 and the apache handler, but you no longer have the PEAR variant. You can try to make this work:

port install pear-PEAR

Or you can do the following:

cd #
curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar -o go-pear.phar
sudo php go-pear.phar

You will prompted to specify config vars, we want to change #1 and #4.

Press 1 – Installation base ($prefix) – and enter:

/opt/local/lib/php54

Press 4 – Binaries directory – and enter:

/opt/local/bin

More checks for PEAR:

pear info pear && rm go-pear.phar
pear config-set auto_discover 1

// make sure PEAR is in the PHP include path
pear config-get php_dir

// if you don't see "/opt/local/lib/php54/share/pear" in there
php54 -i|grep 'php.ini'
// you should see "/opt/local/etc/php54" - if you don't:
sudo vi php.ini
// change include_path to:
include_path = ".:/opt/local/lib/php54/share/pear"

PEAR is installed, let’s install some PEAR stuffs:

// Unit tests
pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit
// Documentation generator
pear install pear.apigen.org/apigen

Restart Apache:

sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

You can start Apache and Memcached, et al by using commands like:

sudo port load apache2
sudo port unload apache2

sudo port load memcached
sudo port unload memcached

// memcached debugging, start with:
memcached -vv