PHP 7.4 on Laravel Valet 3.1

I've setup local dev environment on Laravel Valet 3.1. Ideally I would like to have two versions of PHP - 7.4 and 8.1, where 7.4 would be the default. I am just somewhat confused about some points, can someone please clarify if I am not doing something wrong?

Is there currently any use for valet use [email protected] and similar? Valet 3.1 requires PHP 8.1, which imo is latest. So if I use this command, it downgrades PHP to 7.4, but then valet use [email protected] or pretty much any valet command crashes on error about requires PHP version. My only way is to brew unlink [email protected] and brew link [email protected] to get valet back working.
So from the above, it looks like currently only way to have valet working properly is to have [email protected] as default, older version cannot be default, is that correct?
Having [email protected] as default, I have set [email protected] to some sites using isolate command. Unfortunately that requires to always prefix php commands with valet, eg. valet php artisan make:model. It's good that there is this way, but it is somewhat tedious to do always. Also for running PHPUnit tests I have to do something like valet php ./vendor/bin/phpunit. Is there any better way to perhaps alias php command to valet php for the sites which are isolated, or any walkaround that would make it more convenient?

Thanks so much

Snapey

3 years ago

Level 122

phpmon works well with valet for switching php versions

https://github.com/nicoverbruggen/phpmon

jan_zikmund

3 years ago

Level 11

@snapey - thanks, I have tried it and I can confirm it has no trouble switching global PHP version there and back without any issues. Also the overview panel looks nice, so I can recommend.

Still, I was rather looking for a permanent solution which I can set up once and won't need to do any more switching later. Looks like in the end pure Valet does it just fine, I just have to keep my default PHP on 8.1, isolate sites that I want on 7.4 and in my zsh aliases add alias php="valet php". That will make sure that in any sites' folder isolated on @7.4 I get that PHP even on command line. So I can call php artisan and similar normally.

For PHPUnit, I just wrote a quick shell function, which I also put in ZSH aliases. It checks if phpunit binary is in vendor dir, and if it does, it calls it through actual php version:

pu() {
	FILE=./vendor/bin/phpunit
	if [ -f "$FILE" ]; then
	    php $FILE "$@"
	else 
	    phpunit "$@"
	fi	
}

So far this looks like what I need, I will see where the real world takes me 🤓 🙂

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