How To Install Laravel on OS x
If you’re reading this, chances are you are already in love with laravel, you probably have seen a couple of advantages laravel has over other frameworks, seen a tutorial video or read an article that has sparked your interest in laravel. However, loving laravel is one thing, installing it is another.

I personally got acquainted with laravel just before version 5 was released, but somehow I kept postponing diving into it, sadly, at the time I decided to, laravel 5 had been released and most of the instructions I found online for installation where either for a none XAMPP user or for version 4 for a XAMPP user and this was a pain!

So you don’t go spend so much time looking for a solution like I did, I’ve decided to be your knight in shinny armor, here’s how to install Laravel 5 on XAMMP for Mac OS X.

Requirements
Terminal
XAMPP

OSX by default has PHP pre-installed, so when you install XAMPP, you’ll actually be installing a second PHP version on your MAC. Your Computer decides which to use depending on if internet sharing is on (System preferences/sharing) or if xampp server is on and apache is started. To know which version of PHP you system is using by default, open terminal, run “which php” without the quotes.

If what you get IS NOT “/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin/php”, here’s how to correct it

Create a file called .bash_profile on your home directory (if you don’t have this file already) from terminal, to do this run the following commands one line at a time

Read the rest here

http://www.frankwaive.com/how-to-install-laravel-on-a-mac-with-xampp/