How do I upgrade PHP in Mac OS X?

Question

I feel this is an awfully obtuse question to ask, but strangely, this problem is poorly documented.

I would like to upgrade PHP, but there are several problems:

Answer 1

Upgrading to Snow Leopard won't solve the your primary problem of keeping PHP up to date. Apple doesn't always keep the third party software that it bundles up to date with OS updates. And relying on Apple to get you the bug fix / security update you need is asking for trouble.

Additionally, I would recommend installing through MacPorts (and doing the config necessary to use it instead of Apple's PHP) rather than try to upgrade the Apple supplied PHP in place. Anything you do to /usr/bin risks being overwritten by some future Apple update.