The newer version of XAMPP for macOS is called XAMPP-VM. The XAMPP project is a great tool to use for developing websites as it is cross-platform (Windows and Linux packages are available for it too) and allows you to build your project before you move on to other more advanced ways of serving your content (like using other macOS tools, or even configuring a Docker-based setup). Bundled inside it is Apache (a web server), MariaDB (an open source MySQL-compliant database server), PHP (a server-side programming language), and Perl (a programming language that many people love). XAMPP is a suite of tools delivered to you as a single package that you download and install on your computer. You could just open the Terminal.app and type php index.php which would run your file through the built-in php interpreter, but let’s say you want to view it in your web browser how do you do that? Well, this is where XAMPP comes in. If you’re someone just getting started with web development and you’re leveling up your learning to include PHP and other server-side languages, and you have an Apple Mac product of some kind running macOS 10.15, it’s very likely that you’ve ran into a wall trying to get your first index.php file to run.
