Activity

Problem

Docker builds for Laravel apps on Coolify take 10-15 minutes because every deployment:

1. Installs system dependencies via apt-get (~2-3 min)
2. Compiles PHP extensions from source (gd, intl, pdo_pgsql, redis, etc.) (~2-3 min)
3. Installs Node.js dependencies (~1-2 min)

This happens on every single deploy, even when dependencies haven't changed.

Proposal

Create and maintain official pre-built base images that laravel-coolify uses by default:

# Instead of this (slow)
FROM php:8.3-fpm-bookworm
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y libpq-dev libzip-dev ...
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_pgsql zip gd mbstring ...

# Use this (fast)
FROM ghcr.io/stumason/laravel-coolify-base:8.3
# Extensions already installed, just copy your app

Suggested Base Images

Implementation Plan

1. Base Dockerfile in this repo under docker/base/
2. GitHub Actions workflow for:
   • Nightly builds to pick up security patches
   • Triggered rebuilds when Dockerfile changes
   • Multi-arch builds (amd64 + arm64)
3. Automated testing - verify extensions load correctly
4. Update laravel-coolify templates to use these images

Expected Results

• Deploy times drop from ~12 min to ~2-3 min
• Consistent, tested PHP environments
• Security patches applied automatically via nightly builds
• Less bandwidth usage (base image cached on Coolify servers)

Notes

• No Chromium/Browsershot - that's app-specific, users can extend the base
• Images published to GHCR (free for public repos)
• Semantic versioning: 8.3, 8.3.x, 8.3-20240115 tags

---

This came from optimizing the Progress portfolio site where deploys were taking 12+ minutes. Happy to help implement this.