installing ffmpeg on MAMP

Question

I'm attempting to follow this tutorial: http://drupal.org/node/1464236 on installing ffmpeg on MAMP (for use with Drupal, which is incidental)

I'm stuck here:

You should also execute in your Terminal

which php pecl phpize

which should point to your MAMP installation:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.x.x/bin

...but when I do it, which php pecl phpize says it's pointing to /usr/bin/php (and pecl and phpize respectively). If I do ln /usr/bin/php /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/php it says 'file already exists'. How do I point to the right file?

Answer 1

Your $PATH is wrong, which means that something went wrong in the first step of that tutorial:

First of all point your php and phpize to your MAMP environment
Add/change following line in ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc (for bash):

    export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.2.17/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH:/opt/local/bin

and after that please re-login (or just execute e.g. /bin/bash).

Did you remember to re-login?

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Let me also add, doing something like your attempted fix with ln is generally not a good idea. /usr/bin generally contains system-installed software and may depend on that software being the correct version in the correct location. If you want to use a different version of PHP for something, the standard practice is to install it somewhere else, like /usr/local/bin, and then have that directory listed before /usr/bin in your $PATH. That way you'll use your version, while the system will still have its version to use.

Answer 2

Try

ls -l /usr/bin

If it shows something like /usr/bin/php -> /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.x.x/bin in the last column you're all good. Otherwise, you might have to uninstall the non-MAMP php installation.

EDIT: You can also put the MAMP php path before /usr/bin in your $PATH. The first step in the linked tutorial tells you how to do that.