Can't update from PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.2 on Mac

Question

To be more precise, I don't even see where PHP 7.1 is installed.

When I run php -v in the terminal, I get:

PHP 7.1.23 (cli) (built: Feb 22 2019 22:19:32) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

So I thought I would use Homebrew to unlink 7.1 and install 7.2. Should be straightforward. However, running brew unlink php71 returns an error saying:

No such keg: /usr/local/Cellar/php71

And, indeed, in /usr/local/Cellar there is nothing resembling a PHP version.

I tried running brew update and brew upgrade just in case, but it didn't help.

I also tried running a PHP application locally and did phpinfo() within the application, and I got the same version info I got in the console.

When I ran whereis php it gave me the result /usr/bin/php . When I ran whereis php71 it came up with nothing which, I suppose, is to be expected in this situation.

The question is, how do I replace PHP 7.1 with 7.2 in the least painful way? Ideally, I would like to get brew to do this so I can update future version through brew as well.

Answer 1

Mac OS has its own PHP version installed, which is complete independent from brew.

You need to force link your brew version.

brew link php@7.2 --force