Notes on Mod_Python and Apache 2.2 on Mac OS X

01 May 2007

I'm hoping to get away from PHP in favor of mod_python, but the first thing I needed to do was get mod_python successfully working on Mac OS X. I tried once before, using the built-in Apache and Python binaries that ship with Mac OS X. At the time (I think this was still 10.4, but it could have been 10.3), the built-in Python wasn't multithreaded (or something like that) and the mod_python developers were starting to move away from Apache 1.3 altogether.

I had success recently compiling mod_python on Mac OS X Server, against the distributed (but inactive) Apache 2 installation in /opt. However, I found OS X Server to be basically garbage, so I did a fresh install of the client version of Mac OS X, and set about getting Apache 2 to compile, and then mod_python.

It was not easy.

XCode 2.4 Tools

Apache 2 compiles fine with older versions, but mod_python has problems. Make sure to install the latest version of the XCode tools, available at Apple's Developer Site.

Python 2.4.4 (pythonmac.org distribution)

You should be able to use any thread-enabled version of Python, but I choose to use Bob Ippolito's python distribution from pythonmac.org. Also, I did choose 2.4.4 instead of 2.5, but I would imagine 2.5 would work just as well.

Expat 2.0

It looks like Mac OS X 10.4.9 at least doesn't come with a up-to-date version of libexpat, so we install one.

./configure --mandir=/usr/local/share/man CFLAGS=-O2

Apache 2.2.4

First cd into srclib/apr and do the usual configure-make (but not install) routine

Then cd into srclib/apr-util and configure it to use our precompiled apr and the new installed version of libexpat:

./configure --with-apr=../apr --with-expat=/usr/local

followed by a make (but again, no install).

Finally, in the main Apache2 build directory, run this configure line to somewhat mimic the Debian style:

CFLAGS="-arch ppc -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk" \
./configure --prefix=/etc/apache2 --exec-prefix=/usr/local --datadir=/usr/local/share \
--sysconfdir=/etc/apache2 --sharedstatedir=/usr/local/common --localstatedir=/usr/local/var \
--includedir=/usr/local/include --infodir=/usr/local/info --mandir=/usr/local/man --enable-so \
--enable-mods-shared=all --with-mpm=prefork --with-apr=srclib/apr --with-apr-util=srclib/apr-util

Tweaks and Configuration Changes

First of all, I had to turn off a number of extra modules I don't ever use. I like having them around, which is why I built them all, but I also discovered I don't know quite as much about which-modules-do-what as I thought I did. A little investigation later and things were good, except for the following:

Had to make sure the TypesConfig directive was pointing to the right place, with: TypesConfig /private/etc/httpd/mime.types
For now, Apache doesn't seem to know where to look for the config file. It tries to find it at /httpd.conf, so for now I have to launch the apache process manually, and can't use apachectl. This is probably a problem with my configure line, but I can't figure out what, since I definitely included --sysconfdir
For some reason, after all this I had a problem with my Subversion installation. Normally, I use the subversion package found at Metissian, but this seemed damaged or otherwise broken because I was getting an error similar to the one I was getting from the mod_python configure process (before I recompiled expat).

Retarded Hacks to Fix above

after config, in include/ap_config_auto.h Change AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE to /private/etc/httpd/mime.types Change SERVER_CONFIG_FILE to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

mod_python 3.3.1

./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/bin/apxs --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.4