I personally use Macports to set up the PHP development environment. I guess this is not the best solution right now, as it requires a little more configuration than a complete solution like Xampp, but it gives you a little more flexibility.
Macports
Once you have installed this (remember to install the Unix Xcode tools first), you can easily install the packages. For instance:
sudo port install apache2
sudo port install php5 +apache2
sudo port install mysql5
You can also easily add modules:
sudo port install php5-curl
I installed Apache as follows (found this on stackoverflow), so I don’t need to constantly change the apache conf file every time the project starts.
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName *.dev
VirtualDocumentRoot "/Users/les/Documents/workspace/%-2+/site/html"
</VirtualHost>
/etc/hosts apache:
127.0.0.1 merchant.dev
/Users/les/Documents/workspace/merchant/site/html
, .bash_profile
alias ap='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl'
alias apconfig='mate /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf'
alias hostconfig='mate /etc/hosts'
alias dsclean='find . -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \;'
mate - , textmate ( mac)
dsclean - -, svn Mac.