Change php-cli version in Terminal

jeremycellis wrote:
when using PHP through the command line (which also includes cron jobs I've set up, etc.) it still thinks it is 5.3.x. A php -v from the command line shows: PHP 5.3.2 (cli).

Assuming your default shell is bash, create a file named .bash_profile in your home directory and put these lines in it, where "path/to/php_5.3.x" is replaced by the appropriate path:

PATH=/path/to/php_5.3.x:$PATH
export PATH

Then make it executable with this command:

chmod u+x .bash_profile

jeremycellis wrote:
So this is what I put in that ~/.bash_profile (I had already tried putting this in the preëxisting file ~/.profile) was:

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:$PATH
export PATH

But the original PATH is just empty here. You aren't doing anything. You need to add the path to PHP 5.2 and it needs to come before any system paths. That way, when you type php on the command line, it will find PHP 5.2 and stop looking.

Apache runs as its own process and doesn't use your path. To use PHP 5.2 inside Apache, you had to have given it the exact path to Apache 5.2.

William Boyd, Jr. wrote:
chmod u+x .bash_profile

Does .bash_profile net to be executable?
Mine has always been -rw-r--r--@

Tony T1 wrote:
Does .bash_profile net to be executable?
Mine has always been -rw-r--r--@

I'm not sure that's an absolute requirement. I just though it would be prudent to give any script file executable permissions. The "man" page for bash says that it "reads and executes commands" from .bash_profile, so perhaps execute permissions aren't needed in that case.

jeremycellis wrote:
So I don't think I actually have a php 5.2.x binary. Is it possible to actually downgrade the php 5.3.x CLI install?

You don't want to change the system version. You can certainly download the PHP source, compile it, and install it into /usr/local and it should run fine. Even better, since you only need this for the command line client, you don't have to worry about having a matching Apache. Just make sure that your full 5.2 PHP completely matches your .so version in terms of build settings and libraries.

I wish macs came with apt-get or a similar package manager because I think this would be easier if so.

That is by design. Apple doesn't want to have to deal with a moving target OS when updating. There is no "Linux operating system" - singular. Each individual Linux machine is a unique OS.

If you want there are a number of 3rd party package managers for MacOS X. I think they are useful only in some very specific circumstances. If you jump to them without knowing all of the side effects, you could get burned. If you do the required research and have good knowledge of MacOS X and how the 3rd party package manager works, you can use it effectively. If you don't pay attention, you could wind up unable to build or run even the simplest open-source projects.