Symfony CLI Docker image

A Docker image for working with Symfony projects, based on php:8.5-cli-alpine. It bundles the Symfony CLI, Composer, and all the PHP extensions commonly required by Symfony applications.

Pull the published image

CI builds, scans (hadolint + Trivy) and publishes the image to Docker Hub at lonikor/symfony-cli — you don't have to build it yourself. A push to main only rebuilds and republishes when the Symfony CLI version (the SYMFONY_CLI_VERSION build arg) is new, i.e. its tag isn't already on Docker Hub; pushes for an unchanged version are skipped. v* git tags always build.

docker pull lonikor/symfony-cli:latest
# or a specific Symfony CLI version:
docker pull lonikor/symfony-cli:5.17.1

Available tags

Tag	Points at
latest	The newest published Symfony CLI version
5.17.1	The exact Symfony CLI version baked into the image
1.2.3 / 1.2	Semver, published when you push a v1.2.3 git tag
sha-<commit>	Immutable, tied to a specific commit

The version tag always matches the Symfony CLI binary inside the image, since both come from the SYMFONY_CLI_VERSION build arg (kept current by Renovate).

What's inside

Component	Version / notes
Base image	php:8.5-cli-alpine
Symfony CLI	pinned via SYMFONY_CLI_VERSION build arg, verified against the release checksums.txt
Composer	pinned via COMPOSER_VERSION build arg (official composer image)
PHP ext.	see below
Runs as	non-root user symfony (uid/gid 1000)

All third-party versions are pinned through build args (see the top of the Dockerfile) and kept current automatically by Renovate.

PHP extensions

Core Symfony requirements plus the extensions most projects use:

ctype · iconv · intl · mbstring · opcache · pdo_mysql · pdo_pgsql · pdo_sqlite · mysqli · pgsql · bcmath · gd · gmp · zip · exif · sodium · xsl · soap · ldap · apcu · redis · amqp

(plus everything bundled with the base PHP image: curl, dom, json, openssl, tokenizer, simplexml, xml, fileinfo, session, …)

Verify at any time:

docker run --rm symfony-cli:5.17.1 symfony check:requirements
docker run --rm symfony-cli:5.17.1 php -m

Build

docker build -t symfony-cli:5.17.1 .

# or pin/override versions:
docker build \
    --build-arg SYMFONY_CLI_VERSION=5.17.1 \
    --build-arg COMPOSER_VERSION=2.10.0 \
    -t symfony-cli:5.17.1 .

A Makefile wraps the common tasks:

make build   # build for the local platform
make lint    # hadolint the Dockerfile
make scan    # Trivy scan for HIGH/CRITICAL CVEs
make shell   # interactive shell with the cwd mounted at /app
make check   # symfony check:requirements

Usage

Run any Symfony CLI command against the current directory by mounting it into /app:

# Show the CLI version
docker run --rm symfony-cli:5.17.1 symfony version

# Create a new Symfony project in the current directory
docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD":/app symfony-cli:5.17.1 \
    symfony new my_project --webapp

# Composer inside the project
docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD":/app symfony-cli:5.17.1 composer install

Run the local web server

symfony server:start serves the app on port 8000 (exposed by the image):

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD":/app -p 8000:8000 symfony-cli:5.17.1 \
    symfony server:start --no-tls --port=8000 --allow-all-ip

Then open http://localhost:8000.

--allow-all-ip is needed because the request reaches the server from outside the container; --no-tls keeps it on plain HTTP for local use.