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Managing Multiple PHP versions via the ondrej/php PPA

Last week, I did some system updates, and then decided to compile the most recent PHP releases. I've used phpbrew to manage multiple PHP releases for a number of years, and having it install a new version is fairly routine.

Except this time, it wasn't. Due to updates I installed, I was getting errors first with compiling the GD extension, then with ext-intl:

• If you want Freetype support in ext-gd, you are expected to install the package libfreetype-dev. On Ubuntu, this now installs libfreetype6-dev, which no longer includes the freetype-config binary that PHP's configure script uses to determine what features it supports.

• Similarly, ext-intl depends on the package libicu-dev. Ubuntu's package now omits the icu-config binary used by PHP to determine feature support.

I searched for quite some time to find packages that would resolve these problems. I could have found the source code and compiled it and linked to that, but that would mean keeping that up-to-date on top of my PHP installs.

I even looked in the ondrej/php PPA, as that repository has multiple PHP versions already, including source packages.

And then I thought: why not try using those instead of phpbrew?

The rest of this post is how I made that work.

I use Ubuntu for my operating system. The instructions I present here should work on any Debian-based system, but your mileage may vary. If you are using an RPM-based system, yum will be your friend, but I have no idea how to add repositories in that system, nor if update-alternatives is available. As such, these instructions may or may not help you.

Which is okay. I mainly wrote them to help future me.

Register the PPA

First, I had to add the PPA to the system:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then the usual:

$ sudo apt update

Approach to installation

I first identified the extensions I typically install, matched them to packages in the PPA, and made a list. I knew I'd be installing the same extensions across all PHP versions I wanted, so I figured I could script it a bit.

From there, I executed the following from the CLI:

$ for VERSION in 5.6 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3;do
for> for EXTENSION in {listed all extensions here};do
for for> sudo apt install php${VERSION}-${EXTENSION}
for for> done
for> done

This grabbed and installed each PHP I needed along with all extensions I wanted.

Switching between versions

To switch between versions, you have two options:

• Use the version-specific binaries: /usr/bin/php5.6, /usr/bin/php7.0, etc.

• Set a default via update-alternatives:

  $ sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php5.6
  

  If you're not sure what you have installed, use:

  $ sudo update-alternatives --config php
  

  which will give you a listing, and an ability to select the one to use.

Rootless alternatives

What if you'd rather not be root to switch the default version, though? Fortunately, update-alternatives allows specifying alternate config and admin directories.

Define the following alias in your shell's configuration:

alias update-my-alternatives='update-alternatives \
 --altdir ~/.local/etc/alternatives \
 --admindir ~/.local/var/lib/alternatives'

Additionally, make sure you add $HOME/.local/bin to your $PATH; since defining $PATH varies based on the shell you use, I'll leave that for you to accomplish.

If you open a new shell, the alias will now be available; alternately, source the file in which you defined it to have it take effect immediately.

Once you've done that, you can run the following, based on the PHP versions you've installed:

$ for VERSION in 5.6 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3;do
for> update-my-alternatives --install $HOME/.local/bin/php php /usr/bin/php${VERSION} ${VERSION//./0}
for> done

This will create alternatives entries local to your own user, prioritizing them by version; as a result, the default, auto-selected version will be the most recently installed.

You can verify this by running update-my-alternatives --config php:

There are 5 choices for the alternative php (providing $HOME/.local/bin/php).

  Selection    Path             Priority   Status
---------------

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