Pre-install redis extension on php-* images

[apotek]

While users can install redis.so via .tugboat/config.yml in the init step, it seems like a common enough scenario where perhaps it should be baked into the original tugboatqa docker file.

Debian 12 does not allow for installing php-redis with a simple apt install php-redis nor does docker-php-extension-install redis work. So it must be installed via PECL, which means it has to be compiled, meaning the init phase for tugboat users will be long.

If there is agreement, I can contribute a patch. Otherwise please close.

[q0rban]

A lot of folks use memcache instead of redis, do you think we should have both enabled, or just allow folks to install the one they want?

[apotek]

A lot of folks use memcache instead of redis, do you think we should have both enabled, or just allow folks to install the one they want?

Hi James! It's a good question. Clearly an image doesn't need to cater to every usage and in my case I am perfectly capable of installing redis support over the default image. There are 46k installations of the memcache module and 40k installations or redis. Choosing between the two on that basis is almost arbitrary and it seems one would either not support either, or both.

However, memcache doesn't support clustering so I would imagine redis is more popular in the enterprise. (Redis also supports a ton of other features such as on-disk persistence which an enterprise with potentially GB of data to cache might like). This discussion is not about the relative merits (both are great products) and we shouldn't be making choices for people, but I would say that if most tugboat customers tend towards larger installation bases, you will generally have more redis users than memcache users, I would imagine, given that their production infrastructure is more likely to be redis.

A further consideration in this question is just that the redis extension has to be compiled for the container distribution tugboatqa is using, which means that not having redis pre-installed really slows down builds. I am not sure if memcache also would need to be compiled. But this would be another factor in terms of how convenient and fast you would want your customer's images to be for use.