Sometimes you need to test your projects against multiple versions of PHP.
If you’re using MAMP that’s fairly easy to do: head over to the MAMP Start Screen, select Preferences and see two versions to choose from.
Here I’m using MAMP 2.2 (even though 3.x has been released already) and I have PHP 5.2.17 and PHP 5.5.3.
When I switch to the other version MAMP restarts and I can refresh my browser to see my project running on the other PHP version.
That’s all good if I actually needed either version – but sadly 5.2.x is too old for me, and 5.5.x doesn’t quite work and is a bit too cutting edge. I need it to reflect my production environment.
So what is a boy to do?
The good news is that MAMP ships with several other PHP versions, and you can even download more from http://mamp.info (in the downloads section). Only two versions are displayed at a time, namely the oldest and the newest you have in a certain directory.
To make use of this feature, shut down MAMP, then find the correct folder and simply rename the versions you don’t need to something else – for example, add an x to the front. Open a Finder window and navigate to the following folder:
- Applications/MAMP/bin/php
This is the folder that houses all your PHP versions. You’ll see something similar to this:
I’m renaming my oldest version and my newest version so that I’m left with PHP 5.3.27 and PHP 5.4.19:
Now restart MAMP and see your handy work in action. You’ll be pleased to see that you can now choose the PHP version you actually want to use:
I understand this hack is no longer necessary in MAMP 3 which offers better PHP version management.