10 August 2012

Why MAMP is Better Than XAMPP?

Just thought I would post a very quick little point for those working with a local server on a Mac. It's pretty easy to set up the built in server on the Mac and do it that way, but personally I prefer just using a pre-packaged solution.

For years I've been using XAMPP. Not sure why I thought it was better. On Windows it's definitely a great choice. But on OS X it's not. The trouble is XAMPP has not been updated in quite a while on the Mac side. So, you'll be using pretty old versions of PHP and MYSQL. Also, there are lots of glitches with it. For instance, it doesn't correctly set folder and file permissions. You have to set these manually, which is pretty ridiculous.

Anyhow, I just recently switched to MAMP and it's much smoother. Everything is up to date, xdebug worked pretty much out of the box. No trouble with file permissions, and stuff is a lot more current. So, for now, avoid XAMPP on the Mac until they start supporting it properly. MAMP is good. XAMPP not so much.