How to Add XDebug to the Official Docker WordPress Image

It is intended for the development environment only. Please do not use this in a production environment. Please use the official Docker WordPress image on production instead.

This article describes how to add XDebug to the official Docker WordPress image. You can see the resulting image on Docker Hub. Also, you can see the project on GitHub.

For WordPress with XDebug, you can build the required image from the source (recommended). Or you can use a ready-made image.

In the end, we’ll consider how to separate configurations for the production and development environments using multiple docker-compose files. And how to add PHP extensions to your WordPress image if necessary.

Before running the examples, you would need to install Docker.

1. Building an Image

To build an image go to the directory where your docker-compose.yml is located and clone the Git repository:

git clone https://github.com/wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug.git xdebug

This will clone the Git repository wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug to the subfolder xdebug.

We give 2 examples of XDebug configuration below:

• XDebug 3 – the newest version of XDebug (at the time of writing). Works both with PHP 8 and with some versions below it, e.g. PHP 7.4.
• XDebug 2 – the previous version of XDebug. Incompatible with PHP 8. Works with older versions of PHP (e.g. PHP 7).

XDebug 3

For XDebug 3, the Dockerfile of the cloned project will look like this:

FROM wordpress:6.5.2-php8.3-apache

# Install packages under Debian
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get -y install git

# Install XDebug from source as described here:
# https://xdebug.org/docs/install
# Available branches of XDebug could be seen here:
# https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug/branches
RUN cd /tmp && \
    git clone https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug.git && \
    cd xdebug && \
    git checkout xdebug_3_3 && \
    phpize && \
    ./configure --enable-xdebug && \
    make && \
    make install && \
    rm -rf /tmp/xdebug

# Copy xdebug.ini to /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/
COPY files-to-copy/ /

# Since this Dockerfile extends the official Docker image `wordpress`,
# and since `wordpress`, in turn, extends the official Docker image `php`,
# the helper script docker-php-ext-enable (defined for image `php`)
# works here, and we can use it to enable xdebug:
RUN docker-php-ext-enable xdebug

In this Dockerfile, you can replace the first line with e.g.

FROM wordpress

to build on the latest version of the image wordpress. Or you can add the tag you need (like we added 6.5.2-php8.3-apache above). To build on some particular version of the image.

Your folder files-to-copy will contain a subfolder usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/ with the file xdebug.ini:

# Parameters description could be found here: https://xdebug.org/docs/step_debug#configure
# Also, for PhpStorm, configuration tips could be found here: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/configuring-xdebug.html
zend_extension=xdebug.so
xdebug.mode=debug
# the default port for XDebug 3 is 9003, not 9000
xdebug.client_port=9003
# The line below is commented. This is the IP of your host machine, where your IDE is installed. 
# We set this IP via XDEBUG_CONFIG environment variable in docker-compose.yml instead.
#xdebug.client_host=192.168.1.2

Your docker-compose.yml file can look like this now:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    container_name: wordpress-wpd
    restart: always
    build:
      dockerfile: Dockerfile # this line is actually redundant here - you need it only if you want to use some custom name for your Dockerfile
      context: ./xdebug # a path to a directory containing a Dockerfile, or a URL to a git repository.

    ports:
      - "80:80"

    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: mydbname
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: mydbuser
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: mydbpassword
      # Set the XDEBUG_CONFIG as described here: https://xdebug.org/docs/all_settings#XDEBUG_CONFIG 
      XDEBUG_CONFIG: client_host=192.168.1.2 # This is for XDebug 3. For XDebug 2, we should use remote_host instead of client_host.

    depends_on:
      - db

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/www:/var/www/html

    extra_hosts:
      - "test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name
      - "www.test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name

    networks:
      - backend-wpd
      - frontend-wpd


  db:
    container_name: mysql-wpd
    image: mysql:8.0.33
    command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
    restart: always

    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: mydbrootpassword
      #MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: '1' # You can use this instead of the option right above if you do not want to be able to login to MySQL under root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: mydbname
      MYSQL_USER: mydbuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: mydbpassword

    ports:
      -  "3306:3306" # I prefer to keep the ports available for external connections in the development environment to be able to work with the database
                     # from programs like e.g. HeidiSQL on Windows or DBeaver on Mac.

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

    networks:
      - backend-wpd


networks:
  frontend-wpd:
  backend-wpd:

Of course, you need to set parameters like database name, user, password, etc. to your own values here.

XDEBUG_CONFIG: client_host=192.168.1.2 # change 192.168.1.2 to the IP of your host machine

XDEBUG_CONFIG: remote_host=192.168.1.2 # change 192.168.1.2 to the IP of your host machine

After all these changes, if you run the docker-compose with

docker compose up -d

, you will get the containers for WordPress + Xdebug and for MySQL up and running.

Please notice: If you have an old version of Docker, the command docker compose may not be available to you. In this case, you would need to install docker-compose. And use the command docker-compose in place of docker compose in the Linux terminal.

Still, if you install a modern version of Docker, the command docker compose will be available to you without installing additional packages.

If you need to rebuild the WordPress image for any reason (for example, you’ve changed the version of wordpress in the Dockerfile), you could run the command:

docker compose up -d --build

This would rebuild the WordPress with XDebug image and relaunch the container.

XDebug 2

Few people could be interested in XDebug 2 nowadays. Still, if you need it for some reason:

FROM wordpress:6.1.1-php7.4-apache

# Install packages under Debian
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get -y install git

# Install XDebug from source as described here:
# https://xdebug.org/docs/install
# Available branches of XDebug could be seen here:
# https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug/branches
RUN cd /tmp && \
    git clone https://github.com/xdebug/xdebug.git && \
    cd xdebug && \
    git checkout xdebug_2_9 && \
    phpize && \
    ./configure --enable-xdebug && \
    make && \
    make install && \
    rm -rf /tmp/xdebug

# Copy xdebug.ini to /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/
COPY files-to-copy/ /

# Since this Dockerfile extends the official Docker image `wordpress`,
# and since `wordpress`, in turn, extends the official Docker image `php`,
# the helper script docker-php-ext-enable (defined for image `php`)
# works here, and we can use it to enable xdebug:
RUN docker-php-ext-enable xdebug

# Parameters description could be found here: https://xdebug.org/docs/step_debug#configure
# Also, for PhpStorm, configuration tips could be found here: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/configuring-xdebug.html
zend_extension=xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_port=9000
# The line below is commented. This is the IP of your host machine, where your IDE is installed. 
# We set this IP via XDEBUG_CONFIG environment variable in docker-compose.yml instead.
#xdebug.remote_host=192.168.1.2

2. Using a Ready-made Image

If you do not want to build anything but prefer to use a prebuilt image, some images are available for you at wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug.

Tags of ready-made images for wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug on Docker Hub correspond to the corresponding tags of the official Docker WordPress image.

For example, wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug:6.5.2-php8.3-apache means that the image has been created based on the image wordpress:6.5.2-php8.3-apache.

To use the image with docker-compose, you do not need to clone any project from the git repository. And you need to replace the following lines in the docker-compose.yml from the previous example:

    build:
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
      context: ./xdebug

with e.g.

image: wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug:6.5.2-php8.3-apache

In this case the complete docker-compose.yml will look like this:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    container_name: wordpress-wpd
    restart: always
    image: wpdiaries/wordpress-xdebug:6.5.2-php8.3-apache

    ports:
      - "80:80"

    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: mydbname
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: mydbuser
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: mydbpassword
      # Set the XDEBUG_CONFIG as described here: https://xdebug.org/docs/all_settings#XDEBUG_CONFIG
      XDEBUG_CONFIG: client_host=192.168.1.2 # change 192.168.1.2 to the IP of your host machine

    depends_on:
      - db

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/www:/var/www/html

    extra_hosts:
      - "test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name
      - "www.test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name

    networks:
      - backend-wpd
      - frontend-wpd


  db:
    container_name: mysql-wpd
    image: mysql:8.0.33
    command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
    restart: always

    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: mydbrootpassword
      #MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: '1' # You can use this instead of the option right above if you do not want to be able to login to MySQL under root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: mydbname
      MYSQL_USER: mydbuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: mydbpassword

    ports:
      -  "3306:3306" # I prefer to keep the ports available for external connections in the development environment to be able to work with the database
                     # from programs like e.g. HeidiSQL on Windows or DBeaver on Mac.

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

    networks:
      - backend-wpd


networks:
  frontend-wpd:
  backend-wpd:

Now if you run the docker-compose with

docker compose up -d

, you’ll get the WordPress + Xdebug container and the MySQL container up and running. No building, in this case, is necessary.

Here, the same as in the first example, we have ports 80 (for the HTTP server) and 3306 (for the MySQL server) open for incoming connections.

Of course, this also should be used in the development environment only. And should never be used in production.

3. Configuring PhpStorm

If you write your PHP code in the PhpStorm, here are a few brief tips on configuring the debugger in this IDE.

First, you can install the XDebug browser extension. I usually debug from Chrome so I use the Google Chrome extension. But extensions for other browsers also exist. Please see this PhpStorm documentation page for the list of extensions you can use.

The browser extensions were created by 3rd party developers. You can see the source code for the Chrome browser extension on GitHub here.

Now, before you start debugging, you need to set a breakpoint in PhpStorm (by clicking on the corresponding line on the left of your code in the IDE).

Also, you’ll need to map the remote file path to your root directory at the server to the file path in your local file system. To do that in the most recent versions of PhpStorm (for older versions, please see the note below) you’ll need to go to:

macOS: PhpStorm > Preferences > PHP > Servers

Windows: File > Settings > PHP > Servers

and set the file mapping. In my case (the IDE is installed on a Mac, and the project is deployed under Ubuntu on an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine), the WordPress installed in the folder www. And in the Docker container, the root directory for WordPress is /var/www/html. So I had to set mapping from www to /var/www/html so that PhpStorm knew which directory at the Docker container corresponded to the root directory of the project. E.g. for wpdiaries.com, the settings window would look similar to this:

It is enough to map only the root directory of the project here (at least if you do not have symbolic links). The IDE will guess the paths for subdirectories down below the tree. So, in this case, I have mapped only www (the path to the root of the project PhpStorm sees in my local filesystem) to /var/www/html (the path to the root of the project XDebug sees on the web server).

Please notice: The setting PhpStorm > Preferences > PHP > Servers on macOS (or File > Settings > PHP > Servers on Windows) is valid for recent versions of PhpStorm (versions 2021.1.4, 2021.2 and later versions).

In older versions of PhpStorm (like 2020.3.3 and below), the setting for path mapping was in:

macOS: PhpStorm > Preferences > Languages & Frameworks > PHP > Debug > Servers

Windows: File > Settings > Languages & Frameworks > PHP > Debug > Servers

Now you will need to turn on debugging in the Chrome extension you’ve installed:

Now click the Start Listening button in PhpStorm (top left corner of the IDE screen). The button will start looking like this . Or you could do the same via the top menu:

Run > Start Listening for PHP Debug Connections

If you reload your site page in the browser now, you’ll start debugging.

You can read more about debugging in PhpStorm in the PhpStorm official documentation.

Also, if you are working in PhpStorm, you could consider changing a few PhpStorm default settings to make your development work a little bit faster (at least, this helps me with my own work).

Over the years of PHP programming, I’ve had the experience of using several IDEs for debugging PHP code. With PhpStorm I’ve had the best experience. Other IDEs I worked with were either more complicated to configure (which is tolerable of course) or gave me problems like hanging and refusing to debug till relaunched. With PhpStorm things have been much better. At least this is my personal experience. Yes, I couldn’t resist the temptation to say a few good words about my favorite IDE. 🙂

4. Using Multiple docker-compose Files in Development and Production Environments

Personally, I never use 1 docker-compose file with all the definitions at once. This contradicts the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. I think it is much better to keep the common configuration for the production and development environments in one docker-compose file. And add one separate docker-compose file defining additional things necessary in development. And one more additional docker-compose file defining things for production.

You can find more information on using multiple compose files for production and development environments in this article in the official Docker documentation. Also, please check this article on using compose in production.

4.1 Development Environment

Let’s consider the development environment first.

This is an example of docker-compose.yml with common for development and production configuration options:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    container_name: wordpress-wpd
    restart: always

    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: mydbname
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: mydbuser
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: mydbpassword

    depends_on:
      - db

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/www:/var/www/html

    networks:
      - backend-wpd
      - frontend-wpd

  db:
    container_name: mysql-wpd
    image: mysql:8.0.33
    command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
    restart: always

    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: mydbrootpassword
      #MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: '1' # You can use this instead of the option right above if you do not want to be able login to MySQL under root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: mydbname
      MYSQL_USER: mydbuser
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: mydbpassword


    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/wpd/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

    networks:
      - backend-wpd

networks:
  frontend-wpd:
  backend-wpd:

The separate docker-compose file with specific for the development environment configuration docker-compose.dev.yml will look like this:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    build:
      context: ./xdebug # a path to a directory containing a Dockerfile, or a url to a git repository

    ports:
      - "80:80"

    extra_hosts:
      - "test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name
      - "www.test1.com:192.168.1.88" # Replace test1.com with your local test domain name

    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com
      # Set the XDEBUG_CONFIG as described here: https://xdebug.org/docs/all_settings#XDEBUG_CONFIG
      XDEBUG_CONFIG: remote_host=192.168.1.2

  db:
    ports:
      -  "3306:3306"

Of course, you need to substitute your own data as it’s been explained in the previous examples.

Now you can start the docker containers with the command:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d

In our case, docker-compose.dev.yml adds/replaces individual configuration options in docker-compose.yml.

If you made any changes to Dockerfile, you can rebuild the WordPress container and restart with the command:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d --build

If you need to stop the containers, you will need to run the corresponding command, listing the same docker-compose files you used when you started the containers:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml down

which will stop and remove the containers.

Similarly, you could run commands like

• docker compose start
• docker compose stop
• docker compose restart

4.2 Production Environment

Let’s consider using multiple compose files for production now.

Please note that we consider only the barebone configuration for production here. I did not take into account security when I wrote this example. You need to check Docker documentation and security articles to secure your installation on production. This code is an example only. So enough with the disclaimer, let’s move to the configuration files…

4.2.1 Adding Nginx as a Reverse Proxy

I prefer to use Nginx as a reverse proxy for all WordPress sites on production. I use jwilder/nginx-proxy image for it (see jwilder/nginx-proxy on Docker Hub).

As in the previous sections, I prefer to have the docker-compose file to be separated into 2: one for development and one for production.

I normally place those 2 files to the directory /opt/projects/common/ on the host machine.

The docker-compose.yml file for the development environment looks pretty simple:

version: '3.8'

services:
  proxy:
    container_name: nginx-proxy
    image: jwilder/nginx-proxy
    restart: always

    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"

    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro

    # If the logging section is not commented,
    # docker-compose logs
    # will show the HTTP server logs.
    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "200k"
        max-file: "10"

    networks:
      - frontend-wpd
      # other networks go here

networks:
  frontend-wpd:
    name: frontend-wpd # or it will be created as common_frontend-wpd
  # other networks go here

This is an example of one project behind the Nginx proxy server. Normally I have several projects running behind the proxy. In this case, I would add a separate network for each of the projects.

This docker-compose.yml is good for starting a project in this configuration in the development environment as:

docker compose up -d

In the development environment, everything is very simple. For example, I do not need SSL in the development environment. So Let’s Encrypt certificates were not added in the docker-compose file above.

At production, I add the following docker-compose.prod.yml containing additional (to the file above) configuration:

version: '3.8'

services:
  proxy:
    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/certs:/etc/nginx/certs
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/html:/usr/share/nginx/html
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d

  letsencrypt:
    image: nginxproxy/acme-companion
    container_name: letsencrypt-proxy
    restart: always

    environment:
      DEFAULT_EMAIL: test@example.com # replace with your e-mail
      NGINX_PROXY_CONTAINER: nginx-proxy

    depends_on:
      - proxy

    volumes:
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/certs:/etc/nginx/certs
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/html:/usr/share/nginx/html
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - /opt/projects/common/nginx/acme:/etc/acme.sh

    logging:
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "200k"
        max-file: "10"

    networks:
      - frontend-wpd
      # other networks go here

For adding Let’s Encrypt we used nginxproxy/acme-companion.

Please notice: Previously, jwilder/nginx-proxy used jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion for adding Let’s Encrypt. If your code still uses jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion, you need to migrate to nginxproxy/acme-companion.

For examples of usage please see:

• this GitHub repository
• these examples of using docker-compose
• this docker-compose file

In the example above we use the 2 container setup.

When getting certificates from Let’s Encrypt, take into account that the service has certain limitations. So, for example, if you are debugging and for some reason trying to get certificates for the same domains again and again, you could be blocked from getting certificates for 1 hour. The number of certificates per week and the number of renewals per week are also limited.

Now in the production environment, I start the Docker containers for the reverse proxy as:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

In this case, docker-compose.prod.yml adds/replaces individual configuration options in docker-compose.yml. Please see the explanation above.

When I need to stop the containers and remove them I use the command:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml down

Nginx proxy Docker container always needs to be started first. Other Docker containers (for WordPress and other projects running behind the proxy) should be started after the proxy. This is because the Docker container for proxy creates our networks (frontend-wpd in the example above). Other containers join these networks. If other production containers are started while the networks (they need to join) do not exist yet, you’ll get an error.

4.2.2 Adding Additional docker-compose File for Our WordPress Project

Now in addition to our docker-compose.yml, considered in the section Development Environment (and located in the directory /opt/projects/wpd), we need to add the docker-compose file with additional settings for the production environment. Let’s add the file docker-compose.prod.yml:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    image: wordpress

    expose:
      - "80"

    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: wpdiaries.com, www.wpdiaries.com
      LETSENCRYPT_HOST: wpdiaries.com, www.wpdiaries.com

networks:
  frontend-wpd:
    external: true  # which also means this network must already exist before the container is run
    name: frontend-wpd  # or it will look for wpd_frontend-wpd
  backend-wpd:  

You see that we are using the official Docker WordPress image here.

Also, we use expose instead of ports so our port 80 will be available to Nginx proxy but not available directly for external incoming connections.

Also notice that we join the network frontend-wpd here.

Now we can start our WordPress project (after we have started the Nginx reverse proxy container):

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

And if we need to stop and remove the containers, we need to run (before stopping Nginx reverse proxy container):

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml down

5. What if I Need to Add a PHP Extension to the WordPress Image?

The official Docker WordPress image is very minimal. It does not contain many PHP extensions which could be possibly required by WordPress plugins. The image is kept minimal to keep its size smaller (as explained in the section Adding additional libraries / extensions of the official WordPress image documentation).

But the official Docker WordPress image is based on the official PHP image. And the PHP image contains simple ways of adding PHP extensions. 3 helper scripts exist for it:

• docker-php-ext-configure
• docker-php-ext-install
• docker-php-ext-enable

Let’s consider how to add a PHP extension to our WordPress image.

E.g. imagine we are trying to install a WordPress plugin and getting the following error message: Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined class constant ‘MYSQL_ATTR_USE_BUFFERED_QUERY’. We understand that we need to install the PHP extension pdo_mysql.

First, we need to log in to our WordPress container terminal and check if the extension pdo_mysql has been installed already. Our WordPress container name (in the examples above) is wordpress-wpd. So we log in to the container terminal using docker exec like this:

docker exec -it wordpress-wpd bash

and check if the extension has been installed:

php -m | grep pdo
php -i | grep pdo

This shows that pdo_mysql wasn’t installed.

To install pdo_mysql we need to add the following line to our Dockerfile:

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql

For the development environment (see section 1) we would just add this line to the end of the Dockerfile.

As to the production environment, we could create our Dockerfile like this:

FROM wordpress:6.5.2-php8.3-apache

RUN apt-get update

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql

And if the Dockerfile is located e.g. in the directory ./images/prod, our production environment file docker-compose.prod.yml from section 4.2.2 would look like this:

version: '3.8'

services:

  wordpress:
    dockerfile: Dockerfile # this line is actually redundant here - you need it only if you want to use some custom name for your Dockerfile
    context: ./images/prod # a path to a directory containing a Dockerfile, or a url to a git repository

    expose:
      - "80"

    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: wpdiaries.com, www.wpdiaries.com
      LETSENCRYPT_HOST: wpdiaries.com, www.wpdiaries.com

networks:
  frontend-wpd:
    external: true  # which also means this network must already exist before the container is run
    name: frontend-wpd  # or it will look for wpd_frontend-wpd
  backend-wpd:  

Now we can build our image and run the Docker container (like in section 4.2.2 – after we have started the Nginx reverse proxy container):

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build

We can stop and remove these containers by running (must be done before stopping the Nginx reverse proxy container):

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml down

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this article to the end. I hope you liked it.

A few final notes:

1) You probably know that Docker is used without a hypervisor (such as VirtualBox, VMPlayer, HyperV, etc.) on Linux. Docker is container virtualization. It’s supposed to be used without a hypervisor. On Windows 10, Docker seems to run natively but in fact, uses a HyperV virtual machine with Linux behind the scenes. Docker for Mac also uses a hypervisor (based on xhyve) with a Linux virtual machine.

So, if you would like to install Docker for development purposes on a Mac or Windows computer and you would like to use your favorite Linux distribution there, you would need the Oracle VirtualBox (or another hypervisor like VMPlayer). In this case, please check this article on how to install the VirtualBox on Mac and Windows, create a virtual machine, and tune it for better performance.

2) If you have any questions or comments, I would be happy if you posted them below.

It would be great to hear from you.

Your feedback will be highly appreciated.