phpvm (short for "PHP Version Manager") is a simple bash script for managing PHP versions, inspired by NVM and powered by Docker.
phpvm uses Docker images and containers to enable seamless switching between PHP versions for local development. It can also be used to build highly-customized production-ready PHP Docker images.
To install phpvm, simply download phpvm.sh and put it in your path.
wget https://github.com/mbezhanov/phpvm/archive/master.zip
unzip -p master.zip phpvm-master/phpvm.sh > phpvm
mv phpvm /usr/local/bin
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/phpvmAt this point you should be able to call phpvm from your command line.
Simply typing phpvm in your console, without any arguments, will list all of the available commands.
To use a particular PHP version with your project, navigate to your project root, then run:
phpvm use <version>
...where <version> can be any tag available in the PHP Official Docker Image
For example, if you'd like to run PHP 7.3.6, you can do something like:
phpvm use 7.3.6-cli-alpine
This will automatically pull the corresponding image from Docker Hub and start a new container from it, mounting your project root to /src inside the container and installing the latest version of Composer in the process.
You can use phpvm root to open a terminal for interacting with your container as the root user. This will allow you to tweak the PHP configuration, add specific extensions, or install additional Linux packages. phpvm will remember your changes and associate them with the selected PHP version. Next time you run phpvm use 7.3.6-cli-alpine, you can count on finding the same set of configuration settings, extensions and Linux packages available.
To open a terminal for interacting with your container as the currently logged in user, you can type phpvm tty. This is suitable for running composer install, composer update or any other console scripts and commands related to your project, as it retains the file and directory permissions of your current user.
When you're done using your container, you can optionally type phpvm deactivate to switch it off.