How to extend docker environment generated by wp-env

Question

I've been using wp-env for a while now for running local WordPress environments for development on my Mac. With the introduction of Monterey, Apple removed PHP from MacOS. There are a couple of ways I can think of to handle this situation. Many people seem to be using Homebrew and MAMP. However, I'd prefer not to have to use Homebrew, both because of past personal experience, but also because going down this path seems to create a whole other mess for how to handle PHP and Composer (see, for example, Using PHPCS with Homebrew On MacOS Monterey).

So, my thought was, maybe I can just start doing development inside of the docker container. The questions then:

1. how do I extend the wp-env npm module to add things by default to the docker container, without modifying the wp-env source? i.e., does docker have some sort of config I can write that will run wp-env and then add some other stuff to the image? (e.g., npm, git, eslint, etc... so that the docker container itself becomes a development environment).

2. as I'm actually writing this question, does it even make sense to do it this way? I've found hints that a few people are doing it this way (e.g., a commenter on Using Docker in development the right way talked about his setup where he has vim/tmux/vscode/zsh configuration and shortcuts baked in, and recommends running all services as dockers inside that volume (which he claims is a huge performance increase over host bind mount). Unfortunately, he linked to a git repo that either no longer exists or is at least no longer public.)

Answer 1

While I cannot assist you specifically with wp-env I would recommend using DDev https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ As you will basically have the freedom of choosing custom PHP environments, plus it comes with pre defined configurations to use specific stacks e.g. Laravel, WordPress, Drupal, and is dead simple to use.

I understand you might like to continue with wp-env but maybe this will help you out.