How to install Apache into a custom directory? How to install a copy of Apache into a local custom directory via Terminal (to ~/Desktop/ for example), so it can live without conflicts with another global version of Apache and I cant start and stop it from there?
homebrew

Consider using homebrew to manage a private, isolated, installation of Apache httpd on your Mac.

To install brew and Apache httpd on your Mac, follow the steps on homebrew; the two main steps are:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"


This will install the brew command line tool.

Next use jabberwik's tap to install httpd:

brew tap jabberwik/homebrew-httpd
brew install httpd24


MAMP

An alternative approach is to use a pre-packaged application, such as MAMP. Running MAMP will immediately provide Apache httpd, PHP and MySQL preconfigured and ready to use.