I use MAMP for my local test environment. But I have recently moved beyond just PHP apps. I am also looking at using Tomcat. I would like to mess around with DSpace locally and use Solr also. But I have found a couple of helps for adding things to MAMP.

• Adding Tomcat: http://blog.mirotin.net/22/tomcat-on-mamp-the-simple-way
• Solr: http://listentothis.net/drupal/installing-apache-solr-mac-osx-snow-leopard-drupal/11 [Some more from Drupal.org]
• WordPress MultiSite Subdomains on MAMP: http://perishablepress.com/wordpress-multisite-subdomains-mamp/
• XHProf: While I was in Austin I learned about XHProf for PHP so now I want this too… http://www.lullabot.com/articles/installing-xhprof-mamp-on-mac-os-106-snow-leopard
• Drush: I also want Drush for working with Drupal. But this does not need to live in the MAMP folder. I just don’t know where else is safe. (I should have more on Drush later.)

One of the problems I am facing is that I really like apps like MacPorts. But I do not want to tinker with the CORE and default setting of my OS X machine. So I find that MAMP is a good alternative, but I can not type a command in the command line and have all the dependencies download automatically. I recently found that I could do something like this with Homebrew…. Never used it before but it looks to be the tool for the job. So I have collected a few tutorials like: installing php5.3, Using an gmail as a smtp server, and setting up solr.