laravel - composer to use newer version of php

Question

How do i get composer to use a newer version of php i have installed? I have downloaded and am using php 5.4 in all my local servers but when i download composer it points to my mac's default #!/usr/local/bin/env version, which is 5.3.15. I tried editing the composer executable and change the php used but it broke the executable.

I'm trying to use composer to install Laravel and it is downloading the wrong version because of this.

This is what the top of my composer executable looks like but then there's a bunch of weird characters below.

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
/*
 * This file is part of Composer.
 *
 * (c) Nils Adermann <naderman@naderman.de>
 *     Jordi Boggiano <j.boggiano@seld.be>
 *
 * For the full copyright and license information, please view
 * the license that is located at the bottom of this file.
 */

Phar::mapPhar('composer.phar');
define('COMPOSER_DEV_WARNING_TIME', 1366931166);
require 'phar://composer.phar/bin/composer';

composer.json for laravel project

{
    "require": {
        "laravel/framework": "4.0.*@dev"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "classmap": [
            "app/commands",
            "app/controllers",
            "app/models",
            "app/database/migrations",
            "app/database/seeds",
            "app/tests/TestCase.php"
        ]
    },
    "scripts": {
        "post-update-cmd": "php artisan optimize"
    },
    "minimum-stability": "dev"
}

Answer 1

If you don't care for permanent settings, below command worked for me:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.6.27/bin/php /usr/local/bin/composer install

Syntax is:

{PATH TO YOUR PHP VERSION} {PATH TO COMPOSER EXECUTABLE} {COMPOSER COMMAND}

To know the executable path: which {EXECUTABLE} can be very helpful. Ex: which composer gave below output which I used in command above:

/usr/local/bin/composer