Maintenance & Upgrades

Keeping Laradock current, and keeping your own customizations tracked alongside it.

Update Laradock

A Laradock update is just newer commits on master: new services, version bumps, and fixes. To pull them into your project:

1. Pull the latest: git pull origin master (or git submodule update --remote if you run Laradock as a submodule).
2. Rebuild so image changes take effect: ./laradock rebuild (or docker compose build).
3. Start again: ./laradock start (or docker compose up -d).

tip

After a big update, skim your .env against the refreshed .env.example, new services occasionally add new variables. Your .env always wins, so nothing is overwritten; you're only checking for options worth turning on.

Track your own changes

To keep your Laradock customizations under version control while still pulling upstream updates:

1. Fork the Laradock repository.
2. Use your fork as a submodule inside your project.
3. Commit your changes to your fork.
4. Pull from the upstream repository periodically to stay current.

Upgrading from a very old Laradock

Only relevant if you're coming from a pre-Docker-Desktop setup (Docker Toolbox / VirtualBox) or Laradock v3:

1. Stop the old Docker VM: docker-machine stop {default}.
2. Install Docker Desktop for Mac or Windows.
3. Update Laradock: git pull origin master.
4. Use Laradock as usual: ./laradock start nginx mysql (or docker compose up -d nginx mysql).

warning

If the last step fails, rebuild everything with ./laradock rebuild --no-cache (or docker compose build --no-cache). Warning: container data might be lost, back it up first.