*Update*:

Brew packages have changes so new way of getting things done:\

> brew tap josegonzalez/homebrew-php
> brew install php53 --with-mysql --with-fpm
> brew install php53-apc

*Older instructions*:

I am not a fan of MAMP, XAMPP or other pre-packaged Apache/PHP distributions, in general. Ever since OS-X started moving towards being POSIX-compliant operating system and equally importantly HomeBrew recipes started providing easy installation of required linux packages, I try to stay away from MAMP & Co. Additionally, OS-X comes with pre-install PHP/Apache (and adding MySQL is very easy with HomeBrew) so installing a parallel Apache/MySQL/PHP stack feels dirty.

One big problem: there’s no APC with the pre-installed Mac PHP, which can make large PHP projects very slow.

Thankfully it’s easy to fix, once you already have HomeBrew:

$ sudo pear update-channels
$ brew install pcre
$ sudo pecl install apc