How to get compiled extensions instead of compiling them on the spot?

[andersonpem]

Hi. Sorry if this is a dumb question. I have a pipeline that requires building an image every time a commit is pushed.
Spending compute time compiling C code on every push is a waste of computing power and of time.

I'm preparing an image with these things pre-built to pull from. But is it possible to have compiled sources of these extensions? :)

Thank you for the awesome software.

Andy.

[mlocati]

In order to make PHP extensions work, having their compiled (.so) files is not enough. We also have to install some system (apt/apk) packages, and some of them also require some manual configuration.

If possible, prepare a docker image with the extensions you need, and start from it instead of using the default php docker images.

[akzov]

Why not just "apt-get install -y php-gd"? Otherwise there's an hour long build time to update the packages...

[mlocati]

Why not just "apt-get install -y php-gd"? Otherwise there's an hour long build time to update the packages...

@akzov Because installing the php-gd APT package would also install the php provided by APT: you'll have two PHP versions installed (the one provided by APT and the one already installed in the Docker image).
And about the GD PHP extension: you can reduce its compilation time by using Debian 12+ or Alpine 3.15+; for older versions you can specify set the IPE_GD_WITHOUTAVIF environment variable to 1 (provided that you don't need AVIF support).