How to

I'd recently run across a nifty patch for Eclipse WTP which adds jQuery code assist to WTP's stock JavaScript features. The installation instructions looked simple enough, back up the original WTP JavaScript jar file, download the jQueryWTP patch, run it, and voila, jQuery development gets a little faster in Eclipse. Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy.

During my first attempts, the jQueryWTP patch installer wouldn't run on Mac OS X 10.4.11 at work. The patch wouldn't run on Leopard at home either. Neither the jQueryWTP project nor its SourceForge download page provide Java or WTP version requirements. All screenshots I've seen show installation on Windows. After a lot of flailing, I was eventually able to get the patch installed. Here is an archive of my trials and tribulations.

I recently needed Java 6 to install an Eclipse patch. As you're probably aware, although Apple updated OS X 10.5 Leopard to Java 6 they probably never will provide updates beyond Java 5 for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The good news is that if you're running an Intel-based Mac, you can keep your Java environment up-to-date with SoyLatte, which is part of the OpenJDK BSD-Port project.

4/2/08 - Added php.ini settings to use the proper MySQL socket at /tmp/mysql.sock.

3/23/08 - After going through these instructions on a new Leopard system, I made a few minor updates. The steps should now work for Leopard as well as Tiger.

While options abound, MacPorts may be the easiest option to configure a local web development environment on your Mac. I'll mention a few of the other options and then share the steps I've used to install Apache 2 and PHP 5 with MacPorts.

I compiled the latest version of PHP this week at work. It took longer than I expected and dealing with the myriad of package dependencies required to add support for XML/XSLT, GD, and Sybase/MS SQL Server was a PITA. While I know that *nix server administrators must be able to compile software from source, I wouldn't want to make it a regular practice. Just like Linux distributions, Unix package managers exist for Mac OS X. There are two package managers available for the Mac: MacPorts and Fink. Although Fink appears to have a much larger user base, MacPorts is more closely tied to Apple's open source community. In this post I'll go over how you can use MacPorts to manage Unix libraries, modules for languages including Perl and Python, and open source applications, including Wordpress, MediaWiki, and Gallery.