syntax error, unexpected identifier "version"

I have blade files for some XML calls. They start with this line

<?xml version="1.0"?>

I changed from valet to Herd recently and I started to get this error

syntax error, unexpected identifier "version"

Turns out the problem was that Herd has short php On by default. It was trying to render stuff after <? as PHP. The solution was to set

short_open_tag=Off

in my php.ini file. If you don't have access you can instead change your code to

<?php
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>';
?>