Laravel Sail Development

When to Apply

Activate this skill when:

• Starting or stopping the Docker environment
• Adding services to Sail (MySQL, Redis, etc.)
• Running commands inside containers
• Debugging container issues
• Configuring Docker services

Documentation

Use search-docs for detailed Laravel Sail patterns and documentation.

Basic Commands

Starting and Stopping

# Start all containers
./vendor/bin/sail up

# Start in background (detached)
./vendor/bin/sail up -d

# Stop containers
./vendor/bin/sail down

# Stop and remove volumes (reset databases)
./vendor/bin/sail down -v

Running Commands

# Run Artisan commands
./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate

# Run Composer
./vendor/bin/sail composer require package/name

# Run NPM
./vendor/bin/sail npm install
./vendor/bin/sail npm run dev

# Run tests
./vendor/bin/sail test

# Run Tinker
./vendor/bin/sail tinker

Shell Access

# Access application container shell
./vendor/bin/sail shell

# Run command as root
./vendor/bin/sail root-shell

Adding Services

# Add services interactively
php artisan sail:add

# Or specify services
php artisan sail:add mysql redis meilisearch

Available Services

• MySQL 8.0
• PostgreSQL
• MariaDB
• Redis
• Memcached
• Meilisearch
• Typesense
• MinIO
• Mailpit
• Selenium

Configuration

docker-compose.yml

Environment Variables

Database connection

DB_CONNECTION=mysql DB_HOST=mysql DB_PORT=3306 DB_DATABASE=laravel DB_USERNAME=sail DB_PASSWORD=password

Redis

REDIS_HOST=redis REDIS_PASSWORD=null REDIS_PORT=6379

Sail Alias

Add to your shell profile for convenience:

# ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
alias sail='[ -f sail ] && sh sail || sh vendor/bin/sail'

Then use:

sail up -d
sail artisan migrate
sail npm run dev

Database Access

# MySQL CLI
./vendor/bin/sail mysql

# PostgreSQL CLI
./vendor/bin/sail psql

# Redis CLI
./vendor/bin/sail redis

Debugging

# View container logs
./vendor/bin/sail logs

# View specific service logs
./vendor/bin/sail logs mysql

# Follow logs
./vendor/bin/sail logs -f

Xdebug

Publishing Sail Files

# Publish docker-compose.yml and Dockerfiles
php artisan sail:publish

This allows customizing the Docker configuration.

Common Pitfalls

• Forgetting to start Sail before running commands
• Using localhost instead of service names for connections (use mysql not localhost)
• Port conflicts with local services
• Not using sail prefix for commands (running php artisan instead of sail artisan)
• Volume permission issues (use sail root-shell to fix)
• Forgetting to rebuild after Dockerfile changes (sail build --no-cache)