To do so, we are going to get most of the stuff from Jose Gozalez’s formulae. You will need a copy of homebrew installed, you can read about how to install homebrew here.

Let’s start by setting up the dependencies in homebrew.

brew tap homebrew/dupes
brew tap josegonzalez/homebrew-php

Now php54 is available for install through:

brew install php54 --with-mysql

To enable PHP in Apache add the following to httpd.conf and restart Apache:
LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

The php.ini file can be found in:
/usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini

If pear complains about permissions, ‘Fix’ the default PEAR permissions and config:

    chmod -R ug+w /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5/lib/php
    pear config-set php_ini /usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini

After you enabled PHP in Apache, make sure you restart Apache too!

sudo apachectl restart

Troubleshooting

If you get an error that looks like this:”

configure: error: freetype.h not found.
Error: uncaught throw `Failed executing: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5 --disable-debug --localstatedir=/usr/local/var --sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc/php/5.4 --with-config-file-path=/usr/local/etc/php/5.4 --with-config-file-scan-dir=/usr/local/etc/php/5.4/conf.d --with-iconv-dir=/usr --enable-dba --with-ndbm=/usr --enable-exif --enable-soap --enable-sqlite-utf8 --enable-wddx --enable-ftp --enable-sockets --enable-zip --enable-pcntl --enable-shmop --enable-sysvsem --enable-sysvshm --enable-sysvmsg --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --enable-zend-signals --enable-dtrace --enable-bcmath --enable-calendar --with-zlib=/usr/local/Cellar/zlib/1.2.7 --with-bz2=/usr --with-ldap --with-ldap-sasl=/usr --with-xmlrpc --with-kerberos=/usr --with-libxml-dir=/usr/local/Cellar/libxml2/2.8.0 --with-xsl=/usr --with-curl=/usr --with-gd --enable-gd-native-ttf --with-freetype-dir=/usr/X11 --with-mcrypt=/usr/local/Cellar/mcrypt/2.5.8 --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg/8d --with-png-dir=/usr/X11 --with-gettext=/usr/lo

It is because your freetype is not working right. It happened to me after I upgraded from Mac OS X Lion to Mac OS X Mountain Lion. To do safe, uninstall and install freetype back:

brew uninstall freetype
brew install freetype

Also if you get a permissions error, you might have to fix it:

➜  ~  brew install php54      
==> Downloading http://www.php.net/get/php-5.4.5.tar.bz2/from/this/mirror
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/php54-5.4.5
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5 --disable-debug --localstatedir=/usr/local/var --sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc/php/5.4 --with-config-file-path
==> make
==> make install
==> /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5/bin/pear config-set php_ini /usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini
no write access to /Users/kahwee/.pearrc!
Error: uncaught throw `Failed executing: /usr/local/Cellar/php54/5.4.5/bin/pear config-set php_ini /usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini'

I changed the owner from root to kahwee (my username):

sudo chown kahwee /Users/kahwee/.pearrc

That’s all, hope it helps!