This is a very interesting topic. I am a complete newbie to docker. I'm also interested in a good way to deploy an existing laravel application developed locally using sail and docker to a production server.

It's also important to be able to easily sync new local files to the production server in the future. I mean rsync on solo or github on a team.

I don't know how to do but my guess is that we will need to create a new docker image by picking out the laravel application from the sail dev environment. Then define the docker images stack we need to create a proper working "prod" environment on the remote server and add a new laravel application image to this stack instead of mounting the application file volumes.

I have read too many different articles and everyone does it in their own way. And I do not have a solid understanding of how to do it in a good way.

Thanks

Here is the way I go from sail to prod. Special thanks to my brother for his help. and thanks to this article The essence is the same as I described above. In fact, what is missing in the Sail environment, but necessary in the production server? We need a more stable web server. I have taken PHP -FPM + NGINX and going to try RR later.

Here is a sail Dockerfile /vendor/laravel/sail/runtimes/8.1/Dockerfile

And here is my new Dockerfile for prod.

FROM php:8.1-fpm

Arguments defined in docker-compose.yml

ARG user
ARG uid

Install system dependencies

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
git \
curl \
libpq-dev \
libpng-dev \
libonig-dev \
libxml2-dev \
zip \
unzip

Clear cache

RUN apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Install PHP extensions

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_pgsql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd

Get latest Composer

COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer

Create system user to run Composer and Artisan Commands

RUN useradd -G www-data,root -u $uid -d /home/$user $user RUN mkdir -p /home/$user/.composer &&
chown -R $user:$user /home/$user

Set working directory

WORKDIR /var/www

USER $user

next I copied a docker-compose.yml file and change it:

1. new network instead of sail
2. changed volumes name, removed sail prefix
3. added new block nginx:
   image: nginx:alpine
   container_name: app_name-nginx
   restart: unless-stopped
   ports:
   - ${APP_PORT:-80}:80
   volumes:
   - ./:/var/www
   - ./docker/nginx:/etc/nginx/conf.d\ (create new nginx conf file in the app root dir and mount it) networks:
   - network_name
4. then the final block app:
   build:
   args:
   user: user
   uid: 1000
   context: ./
   dockerfile: Dockerfile
   image: app_name
   container_name: app_name-app
   restart: unless-stopped
   working_dir: /var/www/
   volumes:
   - ./:/var/www
   networks:
   - network_name

So now the app runs apart of the sail and I think it is more suitable for a prod. Moved the app to a prod server and run docker compose up --build

@elderstar, Thanks for the reply