My name is phpenv. I was designed for humans, to help simplify the management of multiple PHP custom build installations.

I was originally inspired by the outstanding work of both the projects which you already know and love with a whole bunch of PHP centric additions to help you build your first release, simplify managing and working with diffirent releases and keep you building new release after new release like there's nothing to it.

You are a PHP developer, like we are, and you not only have to have the latest and freshest interpreter to spin your scripts but you also care to see what how they get treated when submitted to older interpretations. Ever wondered why you can't run a PHP app on your own development machine? Well you just found the answer doing when taken for a ride building PHP on their dev machines. Easily customize your configuration options and even build pecl extensions into PHP or manually afterwards. Configure and install custom builds of the same PHP release version directly from the PHP source code repository kept in your local .phpenv folder.

phpenv operates on the per-user directory ~/.phpenv. Version names in phpenv correspond to subdirectories of ~/.phpenv/versions. For example, you might have ~/.phpenv/versions/5.3.8 and ~/.phpenv/versions/5.4.0.

Each version is a working tree with its own binaries, like ~/.phpenv/versions/5.4.0/bin/php and ~/.phpenv/versions/5.3.8/bin/pyrus. phpenv makes shim binaries for every such binary across all installed versions of PHP.

These shims are simple wrapper scripts that live in ~/.phpenv/shims and detect which PHP version you want to use. They insert the directory for the selected version at the beginning of your $PATH and then execute the corresponding binary.

Because of the simplicity of the shim approach, all you need to use phpenv is ~/.phpenv/shims in your $PATH which will do the version switching automagically.

For a more automated install, you can use phpenv-installer. If you prefer a manual approach, follow the steps below.

This will get you going with the latest version of phpenv and make it easy to fork and contribute any changes back upstream.

1. Check out phpenv into ~/.phpenv.

    $ git clone git@github.com:phpenv/phpenv.git ~/.phpenv
   

2. Add ~/.phpenv/bin to your $PATH for access to the phpenv command-line utility.

    $ echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.phpenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

3. Add phpenv init to your shell to enable shims and autocompletion.

    $ echo 'eval "$(phpenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

4. Restart your shell so the path changes take effect. You can now begin using phpenv.

    $ exec $SHELL -l
   

5. (Optional) Install php-build into it and any php. (See php-build home)

    $ git clone https://github.com/php-build/php-build $(phpenv root)/plugins/php-build
    $ phpenv install [any php version]
   

6. (Optional) Rebuild the shim binaries. You should do this any time you install a new PHP binary.

    $ phpenv rehash
   

If you've installed phpenv using the instructions above, you can upgrade your installation at any time using git.

To upgrade to the latest development version of phpenv, use git pull:

$ cd ~/.phpenv
$ git pull

By default, php-build will compile PHP with a default set of options specified by:

• php-build default configure options
• per-version configure options in the PHP build definition. For example, in 7.4.13
• configure options specified in environment variables. See the man page for details.

Typically, if you need to specify how PHP is built on your system, you can add configure options in the PHP_BUILD_CONFIGURE_OPTS variable, and add PHP extensions in the PHP_BUILD_INSTALL_EXTENSION variable.

The preferred way of connecting phpenv applications is by using php-fpm after building php. Your webserver can then be configured to connect to the php-fpm instance. In this approach, php will run as the permissions of the invoking user, which is not necessarily as the web server.

php-fpm can be started in one of the following ways:

• using an init script: by running ~/.phpenv/versions/$VERSION/etc/init.d/php-fpm
• using systemd: by installing ~/.phpenv/versions/$VERSION/etc/systemd/system/php-fpm.service
• using an init script: by writing your own custom init script
• using systemd: by writing your own custom systemd unit
• manually: by running php-fpm (8) and supplying command-line arguments

By default, php-fpm comes with a configuration file under ~/.phpenv/versions/$VERSION/etc/php-fpm.conf, which it will look for when run. This configures php-fpm to listen on localhost:9000 when started. You may edit or replace this file, or supply a different configuration file using the --fpm-config (-y) command line argument.

Instructions for connecting different webservers to php-fpm:

• for Apache, see the apache wiki article
• for NGINX, see the nginx wiki article

Alternatively, you may still use the Apache php module by configuring php-build to build the libphp.so apache extension (directions to follow). libphp.so can then be found by apache under the ~/.phpenv/versions/$VERSION/libexec folder. This file can be used for Apache's LoadModule php5_module directive and requires Apache to restart when changed.

Skip this section unless you must know what every line in your shell profile is doing.

phpenv init is the only command that crosses the line of loading extra commands into your shell. Here's what phpenv init actually does:

1. Sets up your shims path. This is the only requirement for phpenv to function properly. You could also do this by hand by prepending ~/.phpenv/shims to your $PATH.

2. Installs autocompletion. This is entirely optional but pretty useful. Sourcing ~/.phpenv/completions/phpenv.bash will set that up. There is also a ~/.phpenv/completions/phpenv.zsh for Zsh users.

3. Rehashes shims. From time to time you'll need to rebuild your shim files. Doing this on init makes sure everything is up to date. You can always run phpenv rehash manually.

4. Installs the sh dispatcher. This bit is also optional, but allows phpenv and plugins to change variables in your current shell, making commands like phpenv shell possible. The sh dispatcher doesn't do anything crazy like override cd or hack your shell prompt, but if for some reason you need phpenv to be a real script rather than a shell function, you can safely skip it.

Run phpenv init - for yourself to see exactly what happens under the hood.

Like git, the phpenv command delegates to subcommands based on its first argument. The most common subcommands are:

Show the usage and useful help. When you are in trouble, do this ;)

$ phpenv help
$ phpenv help <subcommand>

php-build is a phpenv-compatible plugin that builds and installs php. To be able to use phpenv install, download and install the php-build plugin as described in step 5. of the install instructions above.

Before running phpenv install, make sure the development versions needed to build php are installed in your system. In particular, if you want to build the apache extension, make sure that apache2-dev (or your OS's equivalent) is installed.

Sets the global version of PHP to be used in all shells by writing the version name to the ~/.phpenv/version file. This version can be overridden by a per-project .phpenv-version file, or by setting the PHPENV_VERSION environment variable.

$ phpenv global 5.4.0

The special version name system tells phpenv to use the system PHP (detected by searching your $PATH).

When run without a version number, phpenv global reports the currently configured global version.

Sets a local per-project PHP version by writing the version name to a .phpenv-version file in the current directory. This version overrides the global, and can be overridden itself by setting the PHPENV_VERSION environment variable or with the phpenv shell command.

$ phpenv local 5.3.8

When run without a version number, phpenv local reports the currently configured local version. You can also unset the local version:

$ phpenv local --unset

Sets a shell-specific PHP version by setting the PHPENV_VERSION environment variable in your shell. This version overrides both project-specific versions and the global version.

$ phpenv shell 5.3.9

When run without a version number, phpenv shell reports the current value of PHPENV_VERSION. You can also unset the shell version:

$ phpenv shell --unset

Note that you'll need phpenv's shell integration enabled (step 3 of the installation instructions) in order to use this command. If you prefer not to use shell integration, you may simply set the PHPENV_VERSION variable yourself:

$ export PHPENV_VERSION=5.3.13

Lists all PHP versions known to phpenv, and shows an asterisk next to the currently active version.

$ phpenv versions
  5.2.8
  5.3.13
* 5.4.0 (set by /YOUR-USERNAME/.phpenv/global)

Displays the currently active PHP version, along with information on how it was set.

$ phpenv version
5.4.0 (set by /YOUR-USERNAME/.phpenv/version)

Installs shims for all PHP binaries known to phpenv (i.e., ~/.phpenv/versions/*/bin/*). Run this command after you install a new version of PHP.

$ phpenv rehash

Displays the full path to the binary that phpenv will execute when you run the given command.

$ phpenv which pyrus
/YOUR-USERNAME/.phpenv/versions/5.4.0/bin/pyrus

The phpenv source code is hosted on GitHub. It's clean, modular, and easy to understand (thanks to the rbenv project), even if you're not a shell hacker.

This project is basically a clone (Read: "search and replace") of the rbenv project. It's in need of love and support. If you're interested in improving it please feel free to fork, submit pull requests and file bugs on the issue tracker.

(The MIT license)

Copyright (c) 2012 Dominic Giglio
Copyright (c) 2013 Nick Lombard
Copyright (c) 2015 madumlao

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.