ARG or ENV, which one to use in this case?

This could be maybe a trivial question but reading docs for ARG and ENV doesn't put things clear to me.

I am building a PHP-FPM container and I want to give the ability for enable/disable some extensions on user needs.

Would be great if this could be done in the Dockerfile by adding conditionals and passing flags on the build command perhaps but AFAIK is not supported.

In my case and my personal approach is to run a small script when container starts, something like the following:

#!/bin/sh   
set -e

RESTART="false"

# This script will be placed in /config/init/ and run when container starts.
if  [ "$INSTALL_XDEBUG" == "true" ]; then
    printf "\nInstalling Xdebug ...\n"
    yum install -y  php71-php-pecl-xdebug
    RESTART="true"
fi
...   
if  [ "$RESTART" == "true" ]; then
    printf "\nRestarting php-fpm ...\n"
    supervisorctl restart php-fpm
fi

exec "$@"

This is how my Dockerfile looks like:

FROM reynierpm/centos7-supervisor
ENV TERM=xterm \
    PATH="/root/.composer/vendor/bin:${PATH}" \
    INSTALL_COMPOSER="false" \
    COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \
    COMPOSER_ALLOW_XDEBUG=1 \
    COMPOSER_DISABLE_XDEBUG_WARN=1 \
    COMPOSER_HOME="/root/.composer" \
    COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR="/root/.composer/cache" \
    SYMFONY_INSTALLER="false" \
    SYMFONY_PROJECT="false" \
    INSTALL_XDEBUG="false" \
    INSTALL_MONGO="false" \
    INSTALL_REDIS="false" \
    INSTALL_HTTP_REQUEST="false" \
    INSTALL_UPLOAD_PROGRESS="false" \
    INSTALL_XATTR="false"

RUN yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm \
                   https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
RUN yum install -y  \
        yum-utils \
        git \
        zip \
        unzip \
        nano \
        wget \
        php71-php-fpm \
        php71-php-cli \
        php71-php-common \
        php71-php-gd \
        php71-php-intl \
        php71-php-json \
        php71-php-mbstring \
        php71-php-mcrypt \
        php71-php-mysqlnd \
        php71-php-pdo \
        php71-php-pear \
        php71-php-xml \
        php71-pecl-apcu \
        php71-php-pecl-apfd \
        php71-php-pecl-memcache \
        php71-php-pecl-memcached \
        php71-php-pecl-zip && \
        yum clean all && rm -rf /tmp/yum*

RUN ln -sfF /opt/remi/php71/enable /etc/profile.d/php71-paths.sh && \
    ln -sfF /opt/remi/php71/root/usr/bin/{pear,pecl,phar,php,php-cgi,phpize} /usr/local/bin/. && \
    mv -f /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini /etc/php.ini && \
    ln -s /etc/php.ini /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini && \
    rm -rf /etc/php.d && \
    mv /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.d /etc/. && \
    ln -s /etc/php.d /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.d

COPY container-files /
RUN chmod +x /config/bootstrap.sh
WORKDIR /data/www
EXPOSE 9001

Currently this is working but ... If I want to add let's say 20 (a random number) of extensions or any other feature that can be enable|disable then I will end with 20 non necessary ENV (because Dockerfile doesn't support .env files) definition whose only purpose would be set this flag for let the script knows what to do then ...

• Is this the right way to do it?
• Should I use ENV for this purpose?

I am open to ideas if you have a different approach for achieve this please let me know about it

From Dockerfile reference:

• The ARG instruction defines a variable that users can pass at build-time to the builder with the docker build command using the --build-arg <varname>=<value> flag.

• The ENV instruction sets the environment variable <key> to the value <value>.
  The environment variables set using ENV will persist when a container is run from the resulting image.

So if you need build-time customization, ARG is your best choice.
If you need run-time customization (to run the same image with different settings), ENV is well-suited.

If I want to add let's say 20 (a random number) of extensions or any other feature that can be enable|disable

Given the number of combinations involved, using ENV to set those features at runtime is best here.

But you can combine both by:

• building an image with a specific ARG
• using that ARG as an ENV

That is, with a Dockerfile including:

ARG var
ENV var=${var}

You can then either build an image with a specific var value at build-time (docker build --build-arg var=xxx), or run a container with a specific runtime value (docker run -e var=yyy)

So if want to set the value of an environment variable to something different for every build then we can pass these values during build time and we don't need to change our docker file every time.

While ENV, once set cannot be overwritten through command line values. So, if we want to have our environment variable to have different values for different builds then we could use ARG and set default values in our docker file. And when we want to overwrite these values then we can do so using --build-args at every build without changing our docker file.

For more details, you can refer this.