php: Installing gd on buster results in freetype-config not found

I believe most people here don’t really understand what’s happening / going on.

The latest released docker images with the default tags (e.g. php:7.3-fpm) are now based on Debian Buster instead of Debian Stretch before.

Debian Buster uses a more up-to-date version of the libfreetype6-dev (libfreetype6) package (version 2.9.1-3 instead of 2.6.3-3.2 before). But Version 2.9.1-3 isn’t shipped with freetype-config anymore, as it was removed and the package maintainers recommend to replace calls to freetype-config by calls to pkg-config.

So as I have already commented a few times before here: Switch to the tags suffixing with -stretch. E.g. instead of using php:7.3-fpm you use php:7.3-fpm-stretch. Or instead of php:7.2-apache you use php:7.2-apache-stretch. That’s it.

For people looking here for a QUICK FIX

Set the version of used image to stretch.

If you use for example PHP-FPM 7.3 then in your Dockerfile replace this:

FROM php:7.3-fpm

with this:

FROM php:7.3-fpm-stretch

Works for me and the error is gone.

Temporary use:

FROM php:7.2.19-apache

or:

FROM php:7.3.6-apache

No, not really a good idea. You’ll end up stuck with 7.2.19 or 7.3.6 and won’t receive any security fixes, etc. anymore.

Better use this:

FROM php 7.2-apache-stretch

or:

FROM php 7.3-apache-stretch

I’m curious on why the switch to buster was done “silently” by that I mean why isn’t strech still the default and -buster an option? it just confused me as php at least since 7.* times is all about bc compatibility and this somewhat goes against that philosophy.

Kind of OT, but is it really such a good idea to switch OS version within a minor release? Didn’t expect a switch from Stretch to Buster from 7.3.6 to 7.3.7. Pretty unexpected.

This shouldn’t be an issue with PHP 7.4 because of the migration to pkg-config. https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/PHP-7.4/UPGRADING#L606

This has been a problem for a wee while for linux distros like Arch that have newer versions running. https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76324

The patch here adds dection via pkg-config https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/freetype.patch?h=packages/php (pkg-config freetype2 --cflags and pkg-config freetype2 --libs as @StefanPrintezis notes)

Extracting the PHP source early in your Dockerfile and patching it is one way to work around this.

FROM php:7.3.7-fpm

RUN apt-get update; \
  apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
  libfreetype6-dev \
  libjpeg62-turbo-dev \
  libpng-dev \
  pkg-config \
  patch;

ADD https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/plain/trunk/freetype.patch?h=packages/php /tmp/freetype.patch
RUN docker-php-source extract; \
  cd /usr/src/php; \
  patch -p1 -i /tmp/freetype.patch; \
  rm /tmp/freetype.patch

RUN docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-gd --with-freetype-dir 

I added patch and pkg-config in the example for clarity, I didn’t check to see if they’re included in the buster image by default.

The issue also exist in php:7.2-apache image 😦

This is a known issue in PHP upstream: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76324

For PHP 7.4+ (still a pre-release), the solution is to simply use --with-freetype and it will use pkg-config as appropriate to find freetype.

For older PHP releases, the solution is more complicated and likely involves some variation of https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/php/trunk/freetype.patch, which IMO should really be applied as a backport upstream for handling pkg-config as a fallback in conjunction with freetype-config. We might need to consider applying something like that to our builds, but that’s a solution of last resort – we provide a stock PHP upstream experience as much as possible, and applying patches that ought to be applied upstream is something we try to strongly avoid.

For many users, the solution is likely going to be switching to explicitly use -stretch as described above. To be clear, this is exactly what those Debian release named aliases were added for, and why the stretch variants are not deprecated/removed yet.

This might be related switching to buster from stretch?

Probably. The changelog for libfreetype6-dev states:

• The `freetype-config’ script is no longer installed by default (Closes: #871470, #886461). All packages depending on libfreetype6-dev should use pkg-config to find the relevant CFLAGS and libraries.

I guess that docker-php-ext-configure gd didn’t anticipate this change…

For those still using the freetype.patch here is a working URL. https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/plain/trunk/freetype.patch?h=packages/php&id=a8e8e87f405e0631b2a4552656413735ebf9457c

FROM php:fpm

also have this probrem, change to

FROM php:fpm-stretch

It Works for me and the error is gone.

same issue with php:7.1-fpm, solved with changing version to php:7.1-fpm-stretch (as @jvanoosterom did)

I believe most people here don’t really understand what’s happening / going on.

The latest released docker images with the default tags (e.g. php:7.3-fpm) are now based on Debian Buster instead of Debian Stretch before.

Debian Buster uses a more up-to-date version of the libfreetype6-dev (libfreetype6) package (version 2.9.1-3 instead of 2.6.3-3.2 before). But Version 2.9.1-3 isn’t shipped with freetype-config anymore, as it was removed and the package maintainers recommend to replace calls to freetype-config by calls to pkg-config.

So as I have already commented a few times before here: Switch to the tags suffixing with -stretch. E.g. instead of using php:7.3-fpm you use php:7.3-fpm-stretch. Or instead of php:7.2-apache you use php:7.2-apache-stretch. That’s it.

for those using 7.2-fpm image using 7.2-fpm-stretch not worked but instead 7.2.20-fpm-stretch worked

This might be related switching to buster from stretch?

# I just hit this bug while installing php-7.3.12 onto debian 10.1

# Freetype 2.10.1 (and maybe earlier) offers a configure option to compile its much-missed freetype-config:

cd /usr/local/src/freetype-2.10.1 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/freetype-2.10.1 --enable-freetype-config

# Then tell php configure about it

cd /usr/local/src/php-7.3.12 ./configure <lots of other options> --with-freetype-dir=/usr/local/freetype-2.10.1

For now I am using the following workaround in my custom image as I’m running Magento 2.3.2 and that requires a libsodium version that’s not shipped in stretch.

FROM php:7.2-apache

# Add the stretch repo so the old freetype6 versions are available
RUN echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

# Force apt to install the old freetype6 version
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    libfreetype6-dev=2.6.3-3.2 libfreetype6=2.6.3-3.2

RUN docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype-dir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

same issue with php:7.1-apache

edit: solved with changing to version: php:7.1-apache-stretch

Same issue with wordpress:5.2.2-apache (that’s building FROM php:7.3-apache)

FROM wordpress:5.2.2-apache
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
		libfreetype6-dev \
		libjpeg62-turbo-dev \
		libpng-dev \
	&& docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) iconv \
	&& docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/ --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/include/ \
	&& docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) gd

configure: error: freetype-config not found.
ERROR: Service 'wordpress_apache' failed to build: The command '/bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get install -y 		libfreetype6-dev 		libjpeg62-turbo-dev 		libpng-dev 	&& docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) iconv 	&& docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/ --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/include/ 	&& docker-php-ext-install -j$(nproc) gd' returned a non-zero code: 1

The same issue was closed a year ago in #608 for not being reproducable.

Relevant issue in Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870618

Same here, php:7.1-apache-stretch FTW!

Same issue on php:7.2-fpm image

image: php:7.2-fpm

this line is failing: - docker-php-ext-configure gd --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/ --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/include/

it started happening recently.

Use a base image based on Debian Stretch instead of Buster:

FROM php 7.2-fpm-stretch