PHP 7 release is not far aware PHP 7.0.0 RC5 is the most recent beta release now is a great time to test your applications and ensure they run smoothly on PHP 7.
Whilst you can manually install PHP or use a VM I prefer to use mamp stacks, there dead easy to setup download an installer run it and off you go! Bitnami have mamp stacks for multiple versions of PHP including 7 RC5:
- Windows – https://bitnami.com/stack/wamp/installer
- Linux – https://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/installer
- Mac – https://bitnami.com/stack/mamp/installer
To get up and running download and install Bitnami then go to the application folder and navigate to apache2/htdocs that’s your local server directory add your projects then run http://127.0.0.1:8080/ in your browser to see it in action.
Bitnami comes with phpmyadmin I prefer a mysql client myself you can connect to mysql easily by using the host address as above instead of localhost.