10.5: Install tips for PHP's pecl_http on 64-bit Intel Macs

Nov 21, '08 07:30:01AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Here are some tips for getting the PHP pecl_http extension running on a Macintosh OS X 10.5.x Leopard 64-bit Intel machine. For starters, you need to follow the instructions in the PHP Documentation pages to install the PEAR/PECL manager, because it is no longer in the standard OS X setup:

  1. To compile the extension, you have to install the Developers (Xcode) from your system disks because they are not installed by default. This is a simple step.
  2. It's not made clear that you need to install an older version of pecl_http than the latest stable version (1.6.1 as of this writing), because 1.6.1 needs PHP6. I used version 1.5.6 successfully. So, your Terminal command has to be sudo pecl install pecl_http-1.5.6.
  3. There is apparently a libcurl dependency in the case of pecl_http (although no dependencies are listed at the extension site), but it came with the excellent entropy.ch PHP installation I substituted for the bundled PHP installation. I needed the entropy.ch version because it has the PDO_MYSQL extension and driver I need for the Zend Framework.

    Note that using the entropy.ch substitute can confuse the PECL install manager (it may place the compiled extension in the wrong place for the substitute) -- it's easy enough to move (mv) it after it's successfully compiled.
  4. Once compiled and located properly, you may need to chmod the rights for the extension. I had to to make it comparable to the others in the extensions directory -- not sure this was strictly necessary, but I thought it would help to have them similarly owned and permitted.
  5. As is made clear elsewhere, you need to add the following to your php.ini where all other extensions to load are listed: extension=http.so. I did not comment out the extension_dir="./" line as some suggest, and I had no problems.
  6. Last and perhaps most important, I had to change the underlying Apache startup plist file so that it comes up in 32-bit mode -- it never worked under the standard 64-bit mode.
Read the rest of the hint for the details on the required change to the Apache file noted in the last item above...

Here's the file to change:

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
I have no idea if this is a so-called "bug," or just something I should have recognized on my own. Anyway, here's a link to what the substituted contents should be (found about two-thirds of the way down the page), and here are the needed substitute file contents:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.apache.httpd</string>
<key>OnDemand</key>
<false/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>arch</string>
<string>-arch</string>
<string>i386</string>
<string>/usr/sbin/httpd</string>
<string>-D</string>
<string>FOREGROUND</string>
</array>
<key>SHAuthorizationRight</key>
<string>system.preferences</string>
</dict>
</plist>
That's it, and good luck!

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