You can install multiple versions of PHP on your Ubuntu environment. At the time of writing this article, I have the following versions of PHP installed on my development machine as various applications use different versions of PHP:

  • 5.6
  • 7.0
  • 7.1
  • 7.2

Some are still using PHP 5.6, some use PHP 7.0 and so on. I work with various clients who have not upgraded the applications for various reasons and to support them I have to work with different versions of PHP and switch between different versions. I know I can use vagrant to install machines for each type of environtment but not all projects/update are that big to justify setting up a new environment for them. To switch between different versions of PHP on your Ubuntu development machine you can do the following:

Update the PHP version being used with Apache:

Switch PHP version on Apache
Shell
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# Disable the existing PHP version
 
sudo a2dismod php5.6 #replace this with the version you want to disable
 
 
# Enable the new PHP version
 
sudo a2enmod php7.0  #replace this with the version you want to enable

 

Update the PHP version being used in CLI:

Switch the PHP version on CLI
Shell
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# Replace php7.0 with the version that you want to update
 
sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.0
 
# Verify the update
 
php -v

 

The output of the last command should dislay the updated PHP version:

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PHP 7.0.27-1+ubuntu16.04.1+deb.sury.org+1 (cli) (built: Jan  5 2018 14:12:46) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.0.27-1+ubuntu16.04.1+deb.sury.org+1, Copyright (c) 1999-2017, by Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 2002-2018, by Derick Rethans

 

You should now be good to go.

 

Happy coding 🙂