NOTE: As of January 1, 2013 the phpenv project has been moved and has a new official maintainer. The official repo is now located here. If you'd like to contribute, please fork from that repo and open any issues on its issue tracker.

My name is phpenv. I was designed to help simplify the management of multiple PHP installations, and was inspired by the outstanding work of both the rbenv and ruby-build projects.

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.

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.

    $ cd
    $ git clone git:https://github.com/humanshell/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
   

5. 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

phpenv has been designed as a tool for a local development environment. Currently, phpenv does not build the libphp5.so module. This is due to permission issues during make install that make it difficult to compile multiple modules and link to them for each installed PHP version dynamically. Therefore, phpenv executes PHP as a cgi binary. To accomplish this, add the following code to the end of your httpd.conf file:

# PHPENV Setup
<IfModule alias_module>
    ScriptAlias /phpenv "/PATH-TO-YOUR-HOME-FOLDER/.phpenv/shims"
    <Directory "/PATH-TO-YOUR-HOME-FOLDER/.phpenv/shims">
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</IfModule>

<IfModule mime_module>
    AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php
</IfModule>

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
</IfModule>

Action application/x-httpd-php5 "/phpenv/php-cgi"

NOTE: running php as a cgi binary can be considered insecure, which you can read about here. PLEASE DO NOT RUN PHPENV ON A PRODUCTION SERVER.

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:

The phpenv installation script is based (almost entirely) on the php-build installation script written by Christoph Hochstrasser (CHH). The main difference is that it uses the php-src repo to compile your individual PHP installs as opposed to downloading a tarball from php.net.

You can list the available PHP releases by running:

$ phpenv install --releases

To build one of the listed releases run:

$ phpenv install php-5.3.13

This command will checkout a branch to build in and install that release to its own subdirectory in ~/.phpenv/versions/

Running phpenv install with no arguments will output its usage.

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

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.