Discussion on: Speed up Laravel in Docker by moving vendor directory

[Tyler Smith]

Thanks for checking out the article, Programster! You've got some great feedback here, and I've updated my article in a few places based on a few points you've raised.

1. Docker's Linux VM

Docker Desktop for Mac runs a Linux VM under the hood. If it didn't, then Docker wouldn't be able to run the containers: containers rely on Linux internals like cgroups.

I think you're right that I didn't do a great job clarifying that the VM is specific to Docker Desktop and not Docker Engine. I've changed everywhere that I said "Docker's Linux VM" to "Docker Desktop's Linux VM." Good looking out on this one–thank you!

2. PHP's request model

You're right that PHP can cache byte code between requests if you have PHP's OpCache installed and enabled. I omitted this from my description because OpCache & JIT are not enabled in PHP by default: you have to compile and configure the OpCache extension. Since they are not enabled by default, I consider the post's description of the PHP request model to be accurate. I did consider mentioning OpCache in this section when I wrote the post, but I thought it would have obfuscated the description.

That said, even if you enable OpCache you'll still see performance improvements by moving the vendor/ directory: OpCache checks file timestamps for changes, and it can do the check quicker if the files it's checking are in the container.

3. Optimize Autoloader

Yep, "optimize-autoloader" is set to true by default!

4. Speed of mounted files

I think you're right that I didn't do a great job explaining that this trick with moving Composer's vendor directory really only helps with Docker for Desktop on MacOS and Windows. I added a second paragraph to the intro clarifying that this trick is MacOS/Windows specific.

Also, I'll take a look at Mutagen–thanks for the tip! And thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response: I think this article is better because of the points you've raised.