Installing mcrypt extension for PHP on OSX Mountain Lion

Apologies in advance for the potential n00b questions, I am trying to install the mcrypt extension for PHP on my OSX Mountain Lion machine.

The following steps in terminal is what I have done so far to achieve my PHP install

cd /path/to/downloaded/php-5.3.21/ext/mcrypt/
/usr/bin/phpize
./configure
cd /path/to/downloaded/php-5.3.21
./configure --with-config-file-path=/private/etc/php.ini --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs
make
sudo make install

Which seems to work well and installs PHP 5.3.21 fine. I have then done

sudo nano /private/etc/php.ini

And included

extension=mcrypt.so

Along with an Apache restart, phpinfo() doesn't show that the mcrypt extension is loaded.

I then tried to specify the extension_dir inside php.ini, again with no luck.

I have done

locate mcrypt.so
/opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/mcrypt.so
/usr/local/Cellar/php53-mcrypt/5.3.18/mcrypt.so

And tried both directories as the extension_dir, with no luck.

I have also tried the following, after much Googling

./configure --with-config-file-path=/private/etc/php.ini --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-mcrypt

Which seems to work OK, but then upon "make", it returns

ext/mcrypt/mcrypt.o: No such file or directory
ext/mcrypt/mcrypt_filter.o: No such file or directory

Again, no success.

What am I doing wrong? It seems like the physical compile of mcrypt.so is not happening, or is compiling incorrectly as I would suspect there to be another mcrypt.so found under locate?

Anyone please help? I've gone through pages upon pages of Google searches with no luck!

I tend to use Homebrew on Mac. It will install and configure all the stuff for you.
http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

Then you should be able to install it with brew install mcrypt php53-mcrypt and it'll Just Work (tm).

You can replace the 53 with whatever version of PHP you're using, such as php56-mcrypt or php70-mcrypt. If you're not sure, use brew search php.

Do also remember that if you are using the built in Mac PHP it's installed into /usr/bin you can see which php you are using with which php at the terminal and it'll return the path.

I just went through this on Mountain Lion. Homebrew blocked on libiconv which it thought was missing but was actually up to date. After an hour of trying to get it to recognize libiconv, I gave up and installed it the old fashion way, which took all of five minutes...

(download your php version)
$ wget http://www.php.net/get/php-5.3.21.tar.gz/from/a/mirror
$ tar -xvzf php-5.3.21.tar.gz
$ cd php-5.3.21/ext/mcrypt
$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make test
$ sudo make install 

mcrypt.so is now in your PHP ext dir (/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/ in my case), now you need to add to php.ini as a module

$ vi /etc/php.ini
$ (insert) extension=mcrypt.so
$ sudo apachectl restart

Done - no brew necessary. HTH someone.

Installing php-mcrypt without the use of port or brew

Note: these instructions are long because they intend to be thorough. The process is actually fairly straight-forward. If you're an optimist, you can skip down to the building the mcrypt extension section, but you may very well see the errors I did, telling me to install autoconf and libmcrypt first.

I have just gone through this on a fresh install of OSX 10.9. The solution which worked for me was very close to that of ckm - I am including their steps as well as my own in full, for completeness. My main goal (other than "having mcrypt") was to perform the installation in a way which left the least impact on the system as a whole. That means doing things manually (no port, no brew)

To do things manually, you will first need a couple of dependencies: one for building PHP modules, and another for mcrypt specifically. These are autoconf and libmcrypt, either of which you might have already, but neither of which you will have on a fresh install of OSX 10.9.

autoconf

Autoconf (for lack of a better description) is used to tell not-quite-disparate, but still very different, systems how to compile things. It allows you to use the same set of basic commands to build modules on Linux as you would on OSX, for example, despite their different file-system hierarchies, etc. I used the method described by Ares on StackOverflow, which I will reproduce here for completeness. This one is very straight-forward:

$ mkdir -p ~/mcrypt/dependencies/autoconf
$ cd ~/mcrypt/dependencies/autoconf
$ curl -OL http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-latest.tar.gz
$ tar xzf autoconf-latest.tar.gz
$ cd autoconf-*/
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ make
$ sudo make install

Next, verify the installation by running:

$ which autoconf

which should return /usr/local/bin/autoconf

libmcrypt

Next, you will need libmcrypt, used to provide the guts of the mcrypt extension (the extension itself being a provision of a PHP interface into this library). The method I used was based on the one described here, but I have attempted to simplify things as best I can:

First, download the libmcrypt source, available from SourceForge, and available as of the time of this writing, specifically, at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mcrypt/files/Libmcrypt/2.5.8/libmcrypt-2.5.8.tar.bz2/download

You'll need to jump through the standard SourceForge hoops to get at the real download link, but once you have it, you can pass it in to something like this:

$ mkdir -p ~/mcrypt/dependencies/libmcrypt
$ cd ~/mcrypt/dependencies/libmcrypt
$ curl -L -o libmcrypt.tar.bz2 '<SourceForge direct link URL>'
$ tar xjf libmcrypt.tar.bz2
$ cd libmcrypt-*/
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

The only way I know of to verify that this has worked is via the ./configure step for the mcrypt extension itself (below)

building the mcrypt extension

This is our actual goal. Hopefully the brief stint into dependency hell is over now.

First, we're going to need to get the source code for the mcrypt extension. This is most-readily available buried within the source code for all of PHP. So: determine what version of the PHP source code you need.

$ php --version # to get your PHP version

now, if you're lucky, your current version will be available for download from the main mirrors. If it is, you can type something like:

$ mkdir -p ~/mcrypt/php
$ cd ~/mcrypt/php
$ curl -L -o php-5.4.17.tar.bz2 http://www.php.net/get/php-5.4.17.tar.bz2/from/a/mirror

Unfortunately, my current version (5.4.17, in this case) was not available, so I needed to use the alternative/historical links at http://downloads.php.net/stas/ (also an official PHP download site). For these, you can use something like:

$ mkdir -p ~/mcrypt/php
$ cd ~/mcrypt/php
$ curl -LO http://downloads.php.net/stas/php-5.4.17.tar.bz2

Again, based on your current version.

Once you have it, (and all the dependencies, from above), you can get to the main process of actually building/installing the module.

$ cd ~/mcrypt/php
$ tar xjf php-*.tar.bz2
$ cd php-*/ext/mcrypt
$ phpize
$ ./configure # this is the step which fails without the above dependencies
$ make
$ make test
$ sudo make install

In theory, mcrypt.so is now in your PHP extension directory. Next, we need to tell PHP about it.

configuring the mcrypt extension

Your php.ini file needs to be told to load mcrypt. By default in OSX 10.9, it actually has mcrypt-specific configuration information, but it doesn't actually activate mcrypt unless you tell it to.

The php.ini file does not, by default, exist. Instead, the file /private/etc/php.ini.default lists the default configuration, and can be used as a good template for creating the "true" php.ini, if it does not already exist.

To determine whether php.ini already exists, run:

$ ls /private/etc/php.ini

If there is a result, it already exists, and you should skip the next command.

To create the php.ini file, run:

$ sudo cp /private/etc/php.ini.default /private/etc/php.ini

Next, you need to add the line:

extension=mcrypt.so

Somewhere in the file. I would recommend searching the file for ;extension=, and adding it immediately prior to the first occurrence.

Once this is done, the installation and configuration is complete. You can verify that this has worked by running:

php -m | grep mcrypt

Which should output "mcrypt", and nothing else.

If your use of PHP relies on Apache's httpd, you will need to restart it before you will notice the changes on the web. You can do so via:

$ sudo apachectl restart

And you're done.