Adding libvips to a Rails 7 Docker image - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm new to Docker and trying to create a Dockerfile for this new Rails 7 app. I'm using vips instead of imagemagick for the memory benefits.
and my local machine is a mac so brew install vips takes care of my non docker development flow, but it hasn't gone so well using the ruby-vips gem, or installing from source.
Running $ docker compose up results in:
/usr/local/bundle/gems/ffi-1.15.5/lib/ffi/library.rb:145:in block in ffi_lib': Could not open library 'vips.so.42': vips.so.42: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. (LoadError)
With the following docker-compose.yml:
version: "3.9"
services:
db:
image: postgres
volumes:
- ./tmp/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
environment:
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
web:
build: .
command: bash -c "rm -f tmp/pids/server.pid && bundle exec rails s -p 3000 -b '0.0.0.0'"
volumes:
- .:/myapp
ports:
- "3000:3000"
depends_on:
- db
and a Dockerfile:
FROM ruby:3.0.1
RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y nodejs postgresql-client
WORKDIR /myapp
COPY Gemfile /myapp/Gemfile
COPY Gemfile.lock /myapp/Gemfile.lock
RUN gem install ruby-vips
RUN bundle install
# Add a script to be executed every time the container starts.
COPY entrypoint.sh /usr/bin/
RUN chmod +x /usr/bin/entrypoint.sh
ENTRYPOINT ["entrypoint.sh"]
EXPOSE 3000
# Configure the main process to run when running the image
CMD ["rails", "server", "-b", "0.0.0.0"]
I've also tried installing from source (https://www.libvips.org/install.html) install of using ruby-vips with no luck.

Answer 1

TLDR; ruby-vips need libvips42 installed on your docker image.
Update your Dockerfile to use the following:
RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends nodejs postgresql-client libvips42
PS: run docker compose down and docker compose up --build to force a rebuild of your docker images.

Answer 2

I don't think you're actually installing libvips in your dockerfile. Try this:
FROM ruby:3.0.1
RUN apt-get update -qq \
&& apt-get install -y nodejs postgresql-client
RUN apt install -y --no-install-recommends libvips42
WORKDIR /myapp
...
However, this will install the libvips that comes with buster, and it's 8.7.x from five years ago (!!). Debian does not move quickly.
I would build current libvips from source. Something like this:
# based on buster
FROM ruby:3.0.1
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
build-essential \
unzip \
wget \
git \
pkg-config
# stuff we need to build our own libvips ... this is a pretty random selection
# of dependencies, you'll want to adjust these
RUN apt-get install -y \
glib-2.0-dev \
libexpat-dev \
librsvg2-dev \
libpng-dev \
libgif-dev \
libjpeg-dev \
libexif-dev \
liblcms2-dev \
liborc-dev
ARG VIPS_VERSION=8.12.2
ARG VIPS_URL=https://github.com/libvips/libvips/releases/download
RUN apt-get install -y \
wget
RUN cd /usr/local/src \
&& wget ${VIPS_URL}/v${VIPS_VERSION}/vips-${VIPS_VERSION}.tar.gz \
&& tar xzf vips-${VIPS_VERSION}.tar.gz \
&& cd vips-${VIPS_VERSION} \
&& ./configure --disable-deprecated \
&& make -j 4 V=0 \
&& make install
RUN gem install ruby-vips
That won't include support for GIF save, or for formats like HEIC or PDF. You'll probably want to adjust it a bit. And of course you should not build packages in your deployment docker image, you'd want to do that in a separate dockerfile.
Hopefully ruby-vips deployment will become more automated over the next few months now that's it's the rail7 default. It's rather manual right now.