At the time of this writing, MAMP Pro 2.0.5 comes with a corrupted pear.conf file for PHP version 5.3.6, so I had to do some digging to install PHPUnit. You should be able to open up terminal and safely run the following commands to get PHPUnit installed and working correctly:

rm /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/conf/pear.conf
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/pear channel-update pear.php.net
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/pear upgrade pear
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

Now that it’s installed, give it a try and see if it responds:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/phpunit --version

To run phpunit directly:

mv /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/phpunit /usr/local/bin/phpunit

Note: *you may need to sudo to run the mv command, like so:

sudo mv /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/phpunit /usr/local/bin/phpunit

* after which you will be propted for you password

One last test for good measure:

phpunit --version

Great! You’ve successfully installed PHPUnit in OS X using pear bundled with MAMP Pro 2.0.5. What about Netbeans integration?

1. Open Netbeans and visit your Preferences
2. Select: PHP
3. Select: Unit Testing
4. Click: Browse
5. Navigate to: /usr/local/bin/
6. Select: phpunit

Boom. From here on in you’re all setup with Netbeans talking to PHPUnit safely installed via MAMP Pro’s pear. For more information on what Netbeans can do with PHPUnit, check out the knowledgebase page over at Netbeans.org.