How to properly setup composer within PHP Apache Docker Container

DevelJoe

11/11/23, 9:58 AM

Content of my Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.1-apache

WORKDIR /var/www/html/

RUN pecl install xdebug \
    && docker-php-ext-enable xdebug \
    && a2enmod rewrite \
    && docker-php-ext-install zip

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer
COPY composer.json composer.json
COPY composer.lock composer.lock

RUN groupadd -r user && useradd -r -g user user
USER user
RUN composer install --no-dev

COPY . .

EXPOSE 80

The composer installation fails at the point where it's telling me that the libzip package is needed. I can however not find that package, no matter if via pecl, via apt-get; as most of the forum posts refer to. How can I Install libzip to finally get things running?

A few notes on my Dockerfile lines; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in the setup; it's the first time I'm doing this:

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer
COPY composer.json composer.json
COPY composer.lock composer.lock

As I understood it, the official docs tell you to use this multi-stage approach to get composer running in your PHP Docker container in an optimal way. If I understood it correctly, doing it in this way allows you to share your image without your colleagues needing to install composer / download the packages locally; everything will then be done within the container. Which is exactly what I'm looking for.

RUN groupadd -r user && useradd -r -g user user
USER user
RUN composer install --no-dev

I first tried to simply run the last line composer install --no-dev, which actually won't work, as the container won't let you execute root commands; used by default by composer. Hence the reason for this workaround (changing the user is also what the official docs recommend; according to the link above).

&& docker-php-ext-install zip

When finally able to run the composer install command within the container, it told me that the zip extension is needed; which is why I've added the docker-php-ext-install zip command. Now I'm stuck due to the initially mentioned libzip issue.

If you see a better way to setup composer; I'm happy to hear about a better way.

2703

1 + 0

php

docker

composer

docker-compose

Score:1

Server

Gerald Schneider

11/11/23, 10:20 AM

docker-php-ext-enable is looking for the libzip header files. What you need is the package libzip-dev.

RUN pecl install xdebug \
    && apt update \
    && apt install libzip-dev -y \
    && docker-php-ext-enable xdebug \
    && a2enmod rewrite \
    && docker-php-ext-install zip \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

+ 2

DevelJoe

11/11/23, 10:56 AM

Great, cheers, that works! The only problem now is that there's no `vendor` folder in my container root??

Gerald Schneider

11/11/23, 11:02 AM

That would be a new question. The relevant output from the build would probably be helpful.

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