For OS X, do you prefer MAMP OR XAMPP?

[deckeda]

On the other hand, if a person was also going to want to transfer local site files later to a Windows box, would just using XAMPP be better, since it's available for that, or would it matter?

[M A V I C]

What are you trying to do?

[deckeda]

I have a simple site started on one Mac, using MAMP, and need to move it to another. So I thought now would be the ideal time to reconsider which local environment to use.

[Seacrest]

Are you using a lot of PHP?
Are you referencing a lot of server paths?

More important to reference DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR constant in paths instead of '/' or chr(13) . chr(10) instead of "\n".

Other than that, MAMP apps should translate to XAMPP pretty easily.
So you're using XAMPP on the server?

[M A V I C]

What seacrest says, but honestly I prefer to dev on the server. I usually just create a subdomain to work off of on the live machine. At least for projects where I wont be introducing any excess load or stability issues while developing. Then you know everything is configured the same, stuff like curly quotes for MySQL.

Standard dev process is to dev locally and then spend a day to a week making changes after moving it to the live server so it works. I think that's dumb.

Are you actually using PHP and MySQL?

[deckeda]

This is just a local copy of the site; it's not being served live from either. And I have no clue about anything else you mentioned, sorry. It's a C5 site, if that matters (local copy; live site doesn't match the local in any way since the local is to be a total replacement for it.

[M A V I C]

What's a C5 site?

[Seacrest]

Concrete5.

In that case, I would check out the C5 docs on any challenges people have had installing C5 on Windows servers.

Once C5 is up and running, though, there shouldn't be any issues, as most of the site's content is housed in the database.

[onthedownlow]

I echo pretty much everything said above.

As for OS X, I would just stick with MAMP. Should be relatively easy to copy your root directory and then export the database out and import back in on the Windows-side.

I've served up live sites with MAMP and MAMP Pro for years with zero issues, although I know that it is not recommend as a production server.