Setting up your web development environment on Mac OS X
In this section, we will go step-by-step and ensure that our development environment is set up correctly. From here on out, I'm assuming you are using a machine that is running Mac OS X without any special modifications to Apache or PHP. If you've done a lot of customization to your development environment, then you probably already know how to configure your machine so that everything works properly.
Now that I've bored you to death with disclaimers, let's get things rolling! The first part of our journey is to meet an application that we will spend a lot of our time with: Terminal.
Terminal
Terminal is a built-in command line utility for Mac OS X. Using the command line can be a bit of a strange experience when you are just getting started but is extremely powerful once it's mastered. If the basic commands, such as cd, ls, and mkdir look like gibberish to you, then you might want to do some quick research on the UNIX command line.
Here's how you open Terminal:
- Open Finder.
- Click on Applications.
- Find the folder titled Utilities, and open it.
- Drag the Terminal icon right into your dock; you will be using it a lot!
- Click on the icon for Terminal in your dock.
