Setting MAMP to handle symbolic linking in WordPress

I like to work on plugin and themes keeping them in a plugins and a themes folder which is not nested in a particular WordPress installation but is instead at the top-level of my web-development folder.
Using symbolic linking and the plugin and themes nature of state-less machines I can then work on code in one place only and test it on many WordPress installations at once.

And then I need URLs

When using WordPress built-in functions like plugins_url, plugin_dir_url or anything like that the resulting URLs those functions will produce will not be what I expect

http://wordpress-it.dev/wp-content/plugins/Users/Luca/Dropbox/Developer/WebDeveloper/vhosts/plugins/member-signup-for-wordpress/assets/js/public.min.js?ver=1.0.0

in place of the correct one

http://wordpress-it.dev/wp-content/plugins/member-signup-for-wordpress/assets/js/public.min.js?ver=1.0.0

Symlinks are the problems and a solution

As discussed in many posts around the web the problem lies in using symbolic links.
In the main plugin file I can make some discrimination about it and although a convenient solution already exists I'm looking for a less radical one that will allow me to use symbolic linking both in development and production code without burdening my code too much.
I can use a constant to keep track of the eventual use of symbolic linking in my main plugin file

/**
 * To deal with symbolic linking in local development
 * @var string
 */
$thisFile = __FILE__;
if (defined('USE_SYMLINKS') and USE_SYMLINKS) {
    $thisFile = basename(dirname(__FILE__) . '\\' . basename(__FILE__));
}
/**
 * Useful constants
 */
define('MEMBERSIGNUP_PLUGIN_FILE_URL' , $thisFile);
define('MEMBERSIGNUP_PLUGIN_URL', plugin_dir_url($thisFile));
define('MEMBERSIGNUP_PLUGIN_DIRPATH', plugin_dir_path(__FILE__));
define('MEMBERSIGNUP_PLUGIN_DIRNAME', dirname(__FILE__));
/**
 * Require all the classes of the plugin
 */

foreach (glob(MEMBERSIGNUP_PLUGIN_DIRPATH . 'includes/class-*.php') as $filename) {
    require_once $filename;
}
/*
 * Register hooks that are fired when the plugin is activated or deactivated.
 * When the plugin is deleted, the uninstall.php file is loaded.
*/
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, array(
    'membersignup',
    'activate'
));
register_deactivation_hook(__FILE__, array(
    'membersignup',
    'deactivate'
));

thisFile will default to __FILE__ which is standard for plugin and themes not installed in symbolic linked folders. A check is made on the USE_SYMLINKS constant existence and value to eventually set it to a voodoo function call that will properly set it if using symbolic linking.
Please note that functions that need a path, like register_activation_hook are called the normal way and are given __FILE__ as an argument since those need to attach to a path and not an URL.

Set a constant in MAMP

All of the above magic is possible if the USE_SYMLINKS constant is set on the server and being my local server set-up using MAMP I need to

• tell the server to load an external configuration file before any other
• define the constant in said configuration file

Telling MAMP to load an external configuration file is easily made browsing MAMP menu for File > Edit Template > PHP > PHP xxx php.ini (xxx being the PHP version I use in MAMP), and going for the auto_prepend_file line

; Automatically add files before or after any PHP document.
auto_prepend_file = 
auto_append_file =

to point it to the configuration file I want to load

auto_prepend_file = "/absolute-path-to/localConf.php"

and then create said file, mine is

// file localConf.php

<?php
/**
* Tells PHP applications that symlinking is being used
* @var bool
**/
define('USE_SYMLINKS', true);
?>