Using pecl is hard from the Alpine variant

[TimWolla]

Partly a duplicate of #412 and related to #769.

The adminer image has alpine based variants, because it is a mostly batteries included image for development purposes. What it doesn't include is the database drivers that require installation of a pecl extension.

While checking on the request issue / support request TimWolla/docker-adminer#68 I realized that there is no easy way to install pecl extensions in the Alpine variants. phpize + dependencies are not readily available and the automated management lives within the docker-php-ext-* helper scripts.

Thus I'd like to request either a pecl wrapper or helper scripts for the phpize management that does not require me copying over bits and pieces from various scripts that might break when future changes are made.

[tianon]

I would make a slight adjustment to your steps on TimWolla/docker-adminer#68, since the PHP source isn't necessary:

apk add --no-cache --virtual .phpize-deps-configure $PHPIZE_DEPS
pecl install mongodb
docker-php-ext-enable mongodb
apk del --no-network .phpize-deps-configure

IMO, this is the type of additional effort folks sign up for when they choose to use the (intentionally hyper-minimal) Alpine variants.

More importantly however, I think #851 (thus #840 (comment), etc) is extremely relevant: pecl being included in the core PHP distribution has a short lifespan (deprecated in PHP 7, not planned for inclusion in PHP 8+), so I'd really rather avoid adding any additional behavior that wraps pecl.

[TimWolla]

since the PHP source isn't necessary:

Thanks. Edited.

IMO, this is the type of additional effort folks sign up for when they choose to use the (intentionally hyper-minimal) Alpine variants.

The additional two commands were not the issue, that's absolutely fine and meets my expectations. The issue I had was that it wasn't documented how to do it properly (or I might've missed it).

pecl being included in the core PHP distribution has a short lifespan (deprecated in PHP 7, not planned for inclusion in PHP 8+), so I'd really rather avoid adding any additional behavior that wraps pecl.

Ah, yeah. I believe I read something about this on the php-internals list before, but I don't really keep track of the threads there (15k unread …). Do you happen to know what the alternative for external extensions would be going forward? Manually downloading the source code from somewhere?

[elovin]

pecl being included in the core PHP distribution has a short lifespan (deprecated in PHP 7, not planned for inclusion in PHP 8+),

I didn't know this, do you have a link to when this was announced (did some googling but couldn't find anything) ?

[tianon]

@elovin https://externals.io/message/103977 / php/php-src#3781 / php/php-src@e93d6d9

[tianon]

I guess the action item here is probably to document our PHPIZE_DEPS variable? 😇

Edit: probably specifically in variant-alpine.md? (since it's not really meaningful in Debian as they're pre-installed there)

[TimWolla]

I forgot this issue existed and I effectively moved on, since I know what I have to do.

I guess the action item here is probably to document our PHPIZE_DEPS variable? innocent

But yeah, this makes sense to me, probably with the example from #919 (comment).