What are the steps to downgrade the PHP version to 7.1 and make it default on the latest Homestead 7, Homestead 7 comes with PHP version 7.2 as default.
There are several dev sites on my homestead I want everything to run on 7.1 by default, if I need 7.2 then I will use the following in my homestead yaml
sites:
- map: homestead.test
to: /home/vagrant/Code/homestead/public
php: "7.2"
I think I have a better solution, to switch the php version in Homestead (I am using version 8 currently) running following lines of code switches the default php version.
sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.1
sudo update-alternatives --set phar /usr/bin/phar7.1
sudo update-alternatives --set phar.phar /usr/bin/phar.phar7.1
sudo update-alternatives --set phpize /usr/bin/phpize7.1
sudo update-alternatives --set php-config /usr/bin/php-config7.1
Above line will switch the php version from any version to version 7.1 (Homestead 8 comes with php 7.3 by default).
Do remember to reload web-server (apache or nginx) after making this change.
July 2020 UPDATE: In newer versions of homestead to change php version there are aliases like
php71php72php73php74etc. to easily swith between versions