Switch php versions on commandline ubuntu 16.04

Question

I have installed php 5.6 and and php7.1 on my ubuntu 16.04

I know with apache as my web server, i can do

a2enmod php5.6 to enable php5
a2enmod php7.1 to enable php7

When i disable php7.1 in apache modules and enable php5.6, apache recognizes the change and uses php5.6 interpreter as expected.

But when i run internal php web server from the commandline :-

php -S localhost:8888

php handles requests using php7 , how do i switch between php6.6 and php7.1 in the commandline ?

Answer 1

Switch from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.2 using:

sudo a2dismod php5.6 && sudo a2enmod php7.2 && sudo service apache2 restart

---

Switch from PHP 7.2 to PHP 5.6 using:

sudo a2dismod php7.2 && sudo a2enmod php5.6 && sudo service apache2 restart

Answer 2

type this in your shell

$ sudo update-alternatives --config php

and this is what you will get

There are 4 choices for the alternative php (providing /usr/bin/php).

  Selection    Path             Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/php7.2   72        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/php5.6   56        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/php7.0   70        manual mode
  3            /usr/bin/php7.1   71        manual mode
  4            /usr/bin/php7.2   72        manual mode
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

Choose the appropriate version

Answer 3

I actually wouldn't recommend using a2enmod for php 5 or 7. I would use update-alternatives. You can do sudo update-alternatives --config php to set which system wide version of PHP you want to use. This makes your command line and apache versions work the same. You can read more about update-alternatives on the man page.

Answer 4

You could use these open source PHP Switch Scripts, which were designed specifically for use in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

https://github.com/rapidwebltd/php-switch-scripts

There is a setup.sh script which installs all required dependencies for PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 & 7.2. Once this is complete, you can just run one of the following switch scripts to change the PHP CLI and Apache 2 module version.

./switch-to-php-5.6.sh
./switch-to-php-7.0.sh
./switch-to-php-7.1.sh
./switch-to-php-7.2.sh

Answer 5

When installing laravel on Ubuntu 18.04, be default PHP 7.3.0RC3 install selected, but laravel and symfony will not install properly complaining about missin php-xml and php-zip, even though they are installed. You need to switch to php 7.1, using the instructions above or,

 sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.1

now, running laravel new blog, will proceed correctly

Answer 6

You can create a script to switch from versions: sudo nano switch_php then type this:

#!/bin/sh
#!/bin/bash
echo "Switching to PHP$1..."
case $1 in
    "7")
        sudo a2dismod php5.6
        sudo a2enmod php7.0
        sudo service apache2 restart
        sudo ln -sfn /usr/bin/php7.0 /etc/alternatives/php;;
    "5.6")
        sudo a2dismod php7.0
        sudo a2enmod php5.6
        sudo service apache2 restart
        sudo ln -sfn /usr/bin/php5.6 /etc/alternatives/php;;
esac
echo "Current version: $( php -v | head -n 1 | cut -c-7 )"

exit and save make it executable: sudo chmod +x switch_php

To execute the script just type ./switch_php [VERSION_NUMBER] where the parameter is 7 or 5.6

That's it you can now easily switch form PHP7 to PHP 5.6!