A Company banned me because I made their Electron App running inside Docker

The author says he wanted to run Tinkerwell, an Electron app for PHP developers, inside Docker on Linux because his daily workflow depends on Docker and he does not want a local PHP binary on the host. He first tried a wrapper around his PHP alias, then moved to running Electron in a Debian-based container with the needed display and X11 setup.

He says the setup eventually worked: Tinkerwell opened, the language server ran, Docker integration worked, and he could browse projects and use existing containers. The article also recounts a support conflict with BeyondCode after he asked three questions about indexing and auto-completion, and says he was offered a refund and told not to contact support again.

Reading notes

#

• The author prefers Docker-based PHP workflows and argues that tools should not assume a local PHP binary on the host.
• A wrapper around his PHP alias did not work for Tinkerwell.
• He found that Electron can be run inside Docker on Linux with the right display and X11 configuration.
• The container runs as a matching local user and group to avoid permission problems.
• The Docker image also includes Docker itself so Tinkerwell can use an existing container as a PHP source.
• He says Tinkerwell’s language server and Docker access worked after the setup.
• He reports that BeyondCode’s CEO refused support after several emails and offered a refund instead.
• He says he asked whether Tinkerwell should keep its index between starts and whether auto-completion for Laravel symbols such as config() and User:: would work.
• He suggests JetBrains users can avoid this setup by using the Laravel Tinker plugin, since JetBrains supports Docker-based PHP interpreters.