Drupal VM defaults to PHP 7.4, but you can also install and use 7.2 or 7.3.

Ubuntu

Ondřej Surý's PPA for PHP is used to install PHP 7.4, but you can switch versions by changing php_version inside config.yml to "7.2" or "7.3".

If you're using Apache with mod_php you should also add libapache2-mod-php{{ php_version }} to the extra_packages list.

Note: XHProf does currently not work with PHP 7.1+, make sure you don't have it listed in installed_extras.

RedHat/CentOS 8

Remi's RPM repository is included with Drupal VM, and you can make the following changes to use it to install a different version of PHP than 7.4:

  1. Make sure you've followed the directions for switching to CentOS 8 in the use a different base OS guide.
  2. Change php_version inside config.yml to "7.2" or "7.3".

PHP 5.6 EOL

PHP 5.6 was end-of-lifed (meaning no more community support or security fixes) at the end of 2018, and is not supported by Drupal VM.

Using default distribution packages

If you want parity with your production environment and wish to install the default distribution packages, set php_version: '' inside your config.yml to avoid adding Remi's or Ondřej's repositories. Doing this will use the default packages set in the geerlingguy.php Ansible role.

Note: If you're using a base OS with a PHP version older than what's assumed in the geerlingguy.php role, you will also need to override some of the default variables set by that role in your config.yml. See the geerlingguy.php Ansible role's README for more information.