Getting started

Install pv

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adrum/pv/main/install.sh | sh

The script downloads the build for your platform, verifies it against the published sha256, and puts pv in ~/.local/bin (override with PV_BIN_DIR). It does not touch your shell profile — that line is yours to paste, below.

From source instead:

cargo build --release
install -m 0755 target/release/pv /usr/local/bin/pv

Get a PHP

pv install 8.4          # newest 8.4.x
pv install 8.4.3        # exactly this one
pv install latest       # newest published

Put the shims on PATH

eval "$(pv init zsh)"   # or bash, sh, fish

Add that to your shell profile. It prepends pv’s shim directory, which matters: a shim directory placed after /usr/bin or a package manager’s prefix is silently shadowed by whatever PHP is already there.

Then open a new shell — or run hash -r, because shells cache command locations and yours may still remember a php from before pv existed.

pv doctor

Doctor confirms it worked and says plainly what to fix when it did not.

Pin a version for a project

cd ~/code/legacy-app
pv pin 7.4
php -v                  # PHP 7.4.x, here and below

pv pin writes a .php-version file — a bare version string, one line. Commit it, and everyone on the project gets the same runtime.

Run a tool under the resolved PHP

pv run composer install

Your Composer, the PHP this directory resolves to. pv does not ship Composer; a composer.phar already works through the shims, and this is for the package-manager wrappers that hardcode their own PHP.