dairon

For me main reason of updating built-in version of Apache (1.3.33) was stable proxy support in new version. Proxy support for running Mongrel web server behind. And Mongrel for running Rails applications. :)

You can check you current version by typing following command in Terminal:

httpd -V | grep version

The target computer is Intel-based iMac Core 2 Duo with Mac OS X 10.4.8. To use 64-bitness of processor and OS let’s export useful CFLAGS. Add this to your ~/.bash_profile which means that your architecture is 64-bit ant you’d like to compile Universal binaries.

export CFLAGS="-arch x86_64 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk"

Latest version of Apache is always here: http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. Today is December 12 and latest version is 2.2.3.

Preparing, downloading and untargzipping.

cd
mkdir -p distr/src
cd distr/src
curl -O http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf httpd-2.2.3.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.3

Note: -O after ‘curl’ is a big [ou] not a zero.

Let’s configure! In my case Apache with dependent libraries will be installed in /usr/local so it wouldn’t interfere with built-in version. Add /usr/local/bin to your path before /usr/sbin so by default new Apache binaries will be used.

Apache 2.2.3 requires apr version 1.2. Check your version of apr. In my case it was 0.9.12.

locate bin/apr
./apr-config --version

Note: if your ‘locate’ doesn’t work, apr is probably here: /usr/local/apr/bin

If your version below 1.2, install fresh apr and apr-utils from Apache sources. In my case Apache with dependent libraries will be installed in /usr/local so it wouldn’t interfere with built-in version.

# assuming you are in a httpd-2.2.3 sources directory
cd srclib/apr
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apr-httpd/
make
sudo make install

# assuming you are in a httpd-2.2.3 sources directory
cd srclib/apr-utils
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apr-util-httpd/ \
  --with-apr=/usr/local/apr-httpd/
make
sudo make install

And finally configuring, making and installing Apache. With suexec, rewrite and proxy support.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
  --with-apr=/usr/local/apr-httpd/ \
  --with-apr-util=/usr/local/apr-util-httpd/ \
  --sysconfdir=/etc/httpd 
  --enable-suexec \
  --with-suexec \
  --with-suexec-bin=/usr/local/bin/suexec \
  --with-suexec-caller=webadmin \
  --with-suexec-docroot=/home/webadmin \
  --with-suexec-userdir=/ \
  --with-suexec-logfile=/var/log/httpd/suexec.log \
  --with-suexec-uidmin=500 \
  --with-suexec-gidmin=500 \
  --enable-rewrite \
  --enable-proxy \
  --enable-proxy-http \
  --disable-ipv6
make
sudo make install

Add /usr/local/bin to your path before /usr/sbin so by default new binaries will be used. Put this in your ~/.bash_profile

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"

To simplify Apache control add following aliases to your ~/.bash_profile

alias a1='sudo apachectl start'
alias a0='sudo apachectl stop'
alias a2='sudo apachectl restart'

If you’d like to know more details, let me know in comments.