Introduction

Running Laravel on FrankenPHP is fast — but the setup can get fiddly.

Frankenstack gives you a single, Laravel-ready Docker image that supports:

• 🧱 Classic mode (FPM-style): requests are handled in isolation, with no memory shared between them
• ⚡️ Worker mode (Laravel Octane): keeps the app running between requests for maximum throughput

“Batteries included” with sensible defaults, configurable via environment variables.

Docker Experience Required

Frankenstack is designed to provide a robust PHP image for people familiar with Docker. It does NOT cover Docker Compose basics or the installation and management of services like MySQL, Redis, and others—these are outside the project’s scope. If you’re new to Docker, start with Laravel Sail first.

Included Tools

• SQLite 3: Available for local database development and testing
• MySQL 8.4 Client: For some artisan commands like db and schema:dump (any MySQL Server ≥ 5.7)
• PostgreSQL 18 Client: For some artisan commands like db and schema:dump (any Postgres ≥ 10)
• SSH Client: For some SSH-based Git operations in Composer/NPM (if you can’t use tokens)
• Composer 2: Pre-installed for PHP dependency management
• Node.js, NPM: Two latest LTS versions (22 and 24) are included, with runtime switching via the NODE_VERSION environment variable. Yarn and pnpm are available via Corepack up to Node.js 24.

Included PHP Extensions

Installed extensions:

• bcmath, bz2, core, ctype, curl, date, dom, exif, ffi, fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gmp, hash, iconv, igbinary, imagick, intl, json, ldap, libxml, lz4, mbstring, memcached, mongodb, mysqlnd, opcache, openssl, pcntl, pcov, pcre, pdo, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, phar, posix, random, readline, redis, reflection, session, simplexml, sockets, sodium, spl, sqlite3, standard, tokenizer, uv, xdebug, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, zip, zlib

Some of the extensions are disabled by default, but can be enabled via env (see Opt-in PHP Extensions):

• bz2, ffi, ftp, gd, imagick, intl, ldap, memcached, mongodb, sockets, uv, xdebug