Setup development URLs (e.g. mysite.test) with dnsmasq on Mac OS X

dnsmasq OS X.md

Setup development URLs (e.g. mysite.test) with dnsmasq on Mac OS X

Never touch your local /etc/hosts file in OS X again. Setup your computer to work with *.test domains, e.g. project.test, awesome.test and so on, without having to add to your hosts file each time.

Requirements

• Homebrew
• Mountain Lion

Install

brew install dnsmasq

Setup

Create config directory

mkdir -pv $(brew --prefix)/etc/

Setup *.test

echo 'address=/.test/127.0.0.1' > $(brew --prefix)/etc/dnsmasq.conf

You should probably add strict-order to dnsmasq.conf to keep nameserver order of resolv.conf (see here).

Autostart

Work after reboot

sudo cp -v $(brew --prefix dnsmasq)/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons

Get it going right now

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.dnsmasq.plist

Add to resolvers

Create resolver directory

sudo mkdir -v /etc/resolver

Add your nameserver to resolvers

sudo bash -c 'echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolver/test'

Add local DNS to search order in System Preferences

System Preferences > Network > Wi-Fi (or whatever you use) > Advanced... > DNS > add 127.0.0.1 to top of the list.

Finished

That's it! You can run scutil --dns to show all of your current resolvers, and you should see that all requests for a domain ending in .dev will go to the DNS server at 127.0.0.1