Exploring Laravel Sail on Docker Desktop for Windows without WSL 2

An experimental guide on running (part of) Laravel Sail on Docker Desktop for Windows without WSL 2

(under construction)

Spoiler alert: you will set up Laravel Sail's Docker containers, but will not be able to use the sail command as sail is implemented as a bash script. In stead this guide will set up an interactive session with one of the containers, where you can use the original commands like php artisan and composer seamlessly.

Quick reference

1. Open a Command Prompt and navigate to the directory (e.g. cd my-projects) where you want to create a subdirectory where a new Laravel project is to be installed. Assuming the name of your project directory is strawberry, enter the following command:

docker run --rm -v %cd%:/opt -w /opt laravelsail/php80-composer:latest bash -c "laravel new strawberry && cd strawberry && php ./artisan sail:install"

2. Before you ever think of building and starting the multi-container environment described in strawberry/docker-compose.yml you need to review the strawberry/.env file first, because strawberry/docker-compose.yml contains a set of environment variables (notation: ${}), which will be looked up in strawberry/.env !

• The .env variables DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD will be used during MySQL DB creation (database name and credentials)
• Don't leave DB_PASSWORD empty !!
• Add WWWGROUP=www-data
• If some other application is already listening on TCP/IP port 80, add APP_PORT=8080
• If some other application is already listening on TCP/IP port 3306, add FORWARD_DB_PORT=3307

3. Start the the multi-container environment by

cd strawberry
docker-compose up

4. In a separate command prompt, start an interactive session in the laravel.test container by

docker-compose exec laravel.test bash

Here you can use the original commands like php artisan and composer seamlessly