Foxws
Laravel Podman

Runtime

FrankenPHP Image

The production and development presets build the app on ghcr.io/foxws/laravel-frankenphp, a FrankenPHP image with everything that doesn't change between builds of the app. build-frankenphp.yml builds it from images/frankenphp/Containerfile and publishes it. Building your app pulls it and only copies the app in, installs its dependencies and builds its assets, so the slow apt-get and PHP extension layers don't run again.

Tag Used by What it is
php-8.5 production PHP 8.5 with php.ini-production
php-8.5-dev development PHP 8.5 with php.ini-development, Xdebug and Playwright's browser deps
php-8.4, php-8.4-dev The same with PHP 8.4
php-8.5-6.6.0, php-8.5-6.6, php-8.5-dev-6.6.0, ... The image as it was at that release

The presets' Containerfiles start from it through the RUNTIME_IMAGE build arg. For PHP 8.4, add it under [Build] in the app's quadlet:

[Build]
BuildArg=RUNTIME_IMAGE=ghcr.io/foxws/laravel-frankenphp:php-8.4

The image is rebuilt every week and on every release, for FrankenPHP, PHP and Debian updates. Rebuild your app to pick them up. To keep an image until you choose to update, use a release tag or a digest (ghcr.io/foxws/laravel-frankenphp@sha256:...).

What's inside

  • The official FrankenPHP image (dunglas/frankenphp:1-php8.5), with install-php-extensions and docker-php-ext-*
  • The PHP extensions apcu bcmath exif ffi gd igbinary imagick inotify intl opcache pcntl pdo_pgsql redis sockets uv zip, plus xdebug in the -dev image
  • Composer, Node.js 26 with npm, pnpm and svgo, the PostgreSQL 18 client, gosu, and libavif-bin jpegoptim optipng pngquant gifsicle webp for image optimization (the tools spatie/image-optimizer uses)
  • The docker user (UID/GID 1000). The presets renumber it when the app quadlet's BuildArg=UID=/GID= differ
  • frankenphp without file capabilities, so it runs as the docker user. The quadlets publish unprivileged ports

No inherited ports or health check

The official image has EXPOSE 80/tcp 443/tcp 443/udp 2019/tcp, a HEALTHCHECK on the admin API and Caddy as its entrypoint. A Containerfile can't remove those, so podman ps listed the ports on every container built from it, and every container had its health check. This image copies the official image's files into a FROM scratch image and sets its environment again, which leaves them out. The containers only have the ports, health checks and commands their quadlets set.

Extra PHP extensions or packages

The image still has install-php-extensions, so add extensions in your app's Containerfile, or pass them in the PHP_EXTENSIONS build arg (space-separated):

[Build]
BuildArg=PHP_EXTENSIONS=mongodb pdo_mysql

Packages work the same way, for example in a published production preset:

FROM ${RUNTIME_IMAGE}

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends ffmpeg \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

These layers run again when the runtime image changes, so put ones that take long in an image of your own built on this one, or build the runtime yourself.

Building it yourself

For another Node.js or PostgreSQL version, or to bake your own packages into the base, build the image from the package and set RUNTIME_IMAGE to its tag:

podman build -f vendor/foxws/laravel-podman/images/frankenphp/Containerfile \
    --target=runtime \
    --build-arg NODE_VERSION=24 --build-arg POSTGRES_VERSION=17 \
    -t localhost/my-app-runtime vendor/foxws/laravel-podman/images/frankenphp

Use --target=development for the -dev image, and --build-arg FRANKENPHP_VERSION=1-php8.4 for PHP 8.4. Then add BuildArg=RUNTIME_IMAGE=localhost/my-app-runtime under [Build].

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