Install PHP extensions on Docker

2 min readFeb 11, 2017

I’m developing PHP applications on Docker containers. But there are some points you will struggle to solve even though you use official Docker images. For this time, I will introduce how we can install extensions for PHP on Docker.

Core extensions

According to official Docker image, some docker-php-ext-* commands are prepared for users to install extensions easily on the containers. For example, you add the following line to Dockerfile to install curl extension.

RUN docker-php-ext-install curl

Pecl extensions

Pecl extensions will be also easy to be put on the containers. If you want to install memcached extension, you can do that like below.

RUN pecl install memcached \
    && docker-php-ext-enable memcached

Above all, it looks like very easy steps to deal with that. But you will be in trouble when you try to install extensions which need PHP compiling options.

Pecl extensions with Compiling options

Actually, I consumed a long time to solve this problem when I install mailparse extension which requires --enable-mailparse option to build PHP.

PHP: Installation - Manual

This " PECL extension is not bundled with PHP. Information for installing this PECL extension may be found in the…

php.net

Finally, I got the solution. In Dockerfile of offical image, I found $PHP_EXTRA_CONFIGURE_ARGS .

docker-library/php

php - Docker Official Image packaging for PHP

github.com

From Docker version 1.9, --build-arg option is provided to define environmental variables when we build Dockerfile. So you can add compiling options like this.

docker build . \
    --build-arg PHP_EXTRA_CONFIGURE_ARGS="--enable-mailparse"

Then you put pecl installation on Dockerfile.

RUN pecl install mailparse \
    && docker-php-ext-enable mailparse

Voila!