Practical guides for Laravel Sail—compose snippets, env layout, queues, and production-minded notes.
How to build a production Laravel image: a multi-stage Dockerfile for PHP-FPM and Vite assets, Composer and npm layer caching, OPcache, non-root, secrets, healthchecks and one image for web, workers and the scheduler.
Compose-first recipes for Laravel Sail: add Redis, switch to PostgreSQL, run MongoDB with the PHP extension, RabbitMQ sidecar, Mailpit and Meilisearch wiring, healthchecks and named volumes.
Split Laravel Sail and host configuration: .env.example, FORWARD_* ports, APP_URL in Docker, optional env_file, GitHub Actions with docker compose, and checklists when Sail is not your server.
Run Laravel queues inside Sail: sync vs redis vs database, queue:work and Horizon locally, RabbitMQ with community drivers, failed_jobs, queue:restart, and how production differs.
Fix common Laravel Sail pain points: WSL2 file sync, UID/GID and storage permissions, FORWARD_* port clashes, stale Docker layers, OPcache and Xdebug in dev, npm/Vite split host vs container, and safe volume resets.
Practical Laravel Sail guide: change PHP version, add Redis or RabbitMQ, switch MySQL to PostgreSQL, MongoDB notes, queue workers in containers, env separation, and how Sail differs from dev/staging/production servers.