Installing the INTL extension on MAMP

I just started developing in Symfony2, and the installation told me I should install the Intl extension (intl.so) for internationalization. Although Symfony2 works without the extension, I suspect I will run into problems sooner or later, e.g. when using the translation service. So after trying some different ways to compile and install the extension, I finally found that it is fairly easy using Macports.

First, you need to install Macports (http://www.macports.org/install.php), which allows you to compile and install many Linux packages without any hassle.

Please note, if compiling for 32-bit version of MAMP, please read last section of this blog post (Wrong architecture) before continuing !

After installation, go to your terminal and run following command :

sudo port install php5-intl

This will take a while, and will install a whole lot of packages (even apache, php5, …). When this is done, copy the file /opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/intl.so to the extensions dir of your MAMP application (for PHP5.3, this is/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5.3/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626) :

cp /opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/intl.so /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5.3/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/

Now, add the extension to your php.ini file :

# /Applications/MAMP/conf/php5.3/php.ini
... some stuff here

extension=intl.so

Then (re)start your server, and the extension should be available (check phpinfo()). Have fun 

Wrong architecture
If you get an error about wrong architecture, you have probably compiled everything in 64-bit while MAMP is compiled in 32-bit (and thus the extensions need to be in 32-bit as well). If so, edit the/opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf file, and change (or uncomment) following line :

# /opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf
build_arch                      i386

From now on, macports will compile everything in 32-bit.

PS: related info

how to find is it 32bit or 64 bit

switch(PHP_INT_SIZE) {
    case 4:
        echo '32-bit version of PHP';
        break;
    case 8:
        echo '64-bit version of PHP';
        break;
    default:
        echo 'PHP_INT_SIZE is ' . PHP_INT_SIZE;
        break;
}

how to uninstall homebrew
https://gist.github.com/mxcl/1173223

how to uninstall macports
http://guide.macports.org/chunked/installing.macports.uninstalling.html