Switch between PHP versions with Homebrew

I am working on a few older Drupal sites that are quite insistent on using PHP 5.3 and not PHP 5.4. No problem - I'll just use Homebrew to switch between versions! But I have been running into all kinds of problems every time I have done this, so I figured I would post what I do to repair things here.

So, in theory all you should have to do is install the versions you need if you don't already have them. brew install php53 And when you want to switch just run this: brew unlink php54 && brew link php53

Apache also needs to know what version to use, so edit /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf so that the line that looks like this has the right (major) version number: LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/opt/php54/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

So far so good. You can check the version from the command line:

➜  ~  php --version
PHP 5.3.28 (cli) (built: May  7 2014 09:50:08)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v2.2.5, Copyright (c) 2002-2014, by Derick Rethans

If you are not seeing what you expect, try adding add this to your .bashrc or .zshrc with the correct version number: export PATH="$(brew --prefix homebrew/php/php54)/bin:$PATH"

If things are working now thats great! It doesn't always for me. I get this:

➜  ~  php -i
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libpng15.15.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/local/opt/php53/bin/php
  Reason: image not found

Sadly the only workaround I have found is to uninstall and install again: brew uninstall php53 & brew install php53

It takes quite a long time but it does the trick.