[desrosj]

PECL has been deprecated in favor of PIE (PHP Installer for Extensions), and pecl is no longer bundled with the PHP 8.6 base images. This switches extension installation to PIE for the PHP 8.1–8.5 images.

Changes

• PHP 8.1–8.5: imagick, memcached, pcov, and xdebug are now installed with pie install using their Packagist packages:
  • imagick/imagick:3.8.1 (now pinned; it was previously unpinned)
  • php-memcached/php-memcached:3.4.0
  • pecl/pcov:1.0.12
  • xdebug/xdebug:3.5.3
• PIE is bind-mounted for the RUN step only (the documented approach), so it is not shipped in the final images. The image is pinned by digest (ghcr.io/php/pie:1.5.5-bin@sha256:3fca03c1…), matching how this repository pins actions by SHA. This requires BuildKit, which is the default builder for docker build on ubuntu-latest.
• --skip-enable-extension keeps the existing behavior: extensions are installed but not enabled, and entrypoint/common.sh enables them through LOCAL_PHP_XDEBUG, LOCAL_PHP_PCOV and LOCAL_PHP_MEMCACHED. Imagick is still enabled by default (PIE runs docker-php-ext-enable for it).
• libtool is added to the 8.1–8.5 apt packages, because PIE warns when libtoolize is missing.

Not changed

• PHP 7.4 and 8.0 continue to use PECL. PIE needs PHP 8.1+ to run. An experimental static PIE binary can target older PHP versions, but Xdebug 3.1.x (the last version supporting PHP 7.4) is not published for PIE; only Xdebug 3.4.0+ is. Both images still include pecl.
• PHP 8.6 installs no extensions through PIE yet. Its image is unchanged apart from the reworded comment.
  • Xdebug is not installed on 8.6 today. Adding it (for example, xdebug/xdebug:3.6.0alpha1@alpha) is left for a separate PR.
  • The latest releases of PCOV (1.0.12), Memcached (3.4.0), and Imagick (3.8.1) don't compile against PHP 8.6, which removed several compatibility macros (INI_BOOL/INI_INT/INI_STR, XtOffsetOf, zval_dtor). Only released versions are installed, so they can be added once compatible releases are published.

Testing

The 8.1–8.5 images were built locally for linux/amd64, then checked:

Image	Build	Imagick on by default	LOCAL_PHP_XDEBUG	LOCAL_PHP_MEMCACHED	LOCAL_PHP_PCOV	PIE left in image
8.1–8.5	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	No

After pinning the PIE image by digest, the 8.5 and 8.6 images were rebuilt to confirm the pinned mount works. 8.5 still ships imagick, memcached, pcov, and xdebug, with only Imagick enabled, and 8.6 installs no extra extensions.

For 7.4, 8.0, and 8.6, the only change to the generated Dockerfiles is the reworded # install the required PHP extensions comment.

Notes for reviewers

• While testing, PIE reported the php:8.6-rc-fpm image as thread-safe (8.6.0 ts, extension dir no-debug-zts-20260924), which is unusual for an -fpm variant. This doesn't affect the PR, but it may be worth a look.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_011Y86gwJZGdkh78pggUy4zs

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

No active review issues remain for the migration to PIE-based extension installation.

No open issues 🎉

What changed in this PR

Migrates extension installation to PIE for the WordPress development images using PHP 8.1+, while retaining PECL for PHP 7.4 and 8.0.

Changes:

• Updates the generator to bind-mount pinned PIE during builds and adds libtool for PHP 8.1–8.6.
• Uses pinned PIE packages for PHP 8.1–8.5, preserving default Imagick enablement and runtime toggles for other extensions.
• Adds PIE-based Xdebug installation for PHP 8.6; older images receive only a comment change.

File	Description
update.php	Adds PIE configuration and installation generation alongside legacy PECL support.
images/​8.6/​php/​Dockerfile	Installs Xdebug 3.6.0alpha1 through PIE.
images/​8.5/​php/​Dockerfile	Migrates four extensions to pinned PIE packages.
images/​8.4/​php/​Dockerfile	Migrates four extensions to pinned PIE packages.
images/​8.3/​php/​Dockerfile	Migrates four extensions to pinned PIE packages.
images/​8.2/​php/​Dockerfile	Migrates four extensions to pinned PIE packages.
images/​8.1/​php/​Dockerfile	Migrates four extensions to pinned PIE packages.
images/​8.0/​php/​Dockerfile	Rewords the installation comment; behavior is unchanged.
images/​7.4/​php/​Dockerfile	Rewords the installation comment; behavior is unchanged.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

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Co-authored-by: desrosj <desrosj@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: lancewillett <lancewillett@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: lucatume <lucatume@git.wordpress.org>

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[lancewillett]

This looks good to me. The update.php output matches the committed Dockerfiles, and the uncommitted-changes check confirms it. In the 31ce4ec build logs, all four extensions install on 8.1–8.5 at the versions trunk's PECL build used. That includes Imagick, which already resolved to 3.8.1, so the pin changes nothing today. Imagick still loads by default, and the rest stay off until the entrypoint enables them. Memcached's configure defaults match the old PECL answers too: session and SASL on, serializers off.

Two non-blocking notes:

1. On trunk, the 8.6 image has no Xdebug. So this adds Xdebug rather than replacing a tarball build, as the description and 11656fc say. Worth fixing in the squash message. In core, the PHP 8.6 job's "Run (Xdebug) tests" step will start running under 3.6.0alpha1. That job allows errors, so it can't block, but new results may show up.
2. Consider pinning the PIE image by digest (ghcr.io/php/pie:1.5.5-bin@sha256:3fca03c16df842d02b654dc382db3756058d9c128064f57cace14f8728779ce9, the digest CI resolved). That matches how this repo pins actions by SHA.

The earlier CLI 8.2 failure was a GHCR unknown blob error during push, unrelated to this change.

_{AI review · claude-opus-5-5}

[desrosj]

I've gone and removed the Xdebug addition for PHP 8.6 and will follow up with this in a separate PR.