bgfr wrote:So that is the only possible way? Installing several xampp versions?
The only by xampp supported way.
Of course it is technically possible to bundle other/older PHP versions in a XAMPP stack, but we don't officially provide any help or support in doing so.
XAMPP bundles well known and documentated single components. You will find hundreds of tutorials on how to configure PHP with Apache.
bgfr wrote:Do you have any idea what stops older version of PHP working with latest XAMPP?
Did you provide any information what you exactly did to implement this php version in XAMPP? no.
Did you provide any occured error messages? no.
I still don't understand what you are trying to achieve. If the only goal is to get the php-cli in PHPStorm running, than why even trying to implement it in XAMPP? php-cli is running out of the box!?
But from XAMPP point of view, you are using a wrong PHP version. XAMPP bundles the thread safe (TS) versions of PHP, not the NTS versions.
And your used PHP version is compiled with VC15 and not VS16, so you maybe need to install an additional Visual C++ runtime for that.