MAMPStack at BitRock

While perusing the development downloads at Apple a few weeks ago, I noticed an offering from BitRock called MAMPStack. I hadn’t heard the term MAMP before, but was more than familiar with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Substitute Mac for Linux and you’ve got MAMP. The folks at BitRock have put together some essentially one-click install packages for both LAMP and MAMP (click on their Web Stacks link). I’d bookmarked the link back when I saw it since I was much too chicken to install it on my iBook and have been looking forward to trying it on the new MB Pro.

It installed very quickly and, after following a few post-install steps, everything works fine. They even have phpMyAdmin, one of my favorite web apps, preinstalled. During the install process it asks for just a bare minimum of information (admin passwords). It includes a little rc script to start and stop one or all processes. I’m impressed by their packaging.

They have other intruiging items at their site as well. When I get a chance, I’ll definitely look into their other products. One thing that caught my eye was their multi-platform InstallBuilder which offers text, gui, and unattended custom installers for a nice selection of platforms.

MAMPStack is a great quick-start package for a lot of folks who have compiler-itis. Anyone who needs to tweak their install will need to follow their own path, but if you want a generic test and development platform on your Mac in 5 minutes, you can’t beat it.