PHP CLI VS FPM

https://devops.stackexchange.com/questions/9505/what-is-the-difference-between-php-cli-and-php-fpm-why-2-php-variants-and-why-c#:~:text=They%20are%20different%20tools%20for,the%20command%20line%3A%20php%20somescript.&text=php%2Dfpm%20is%20the%20FastCGI,such%20as%20Apache%20or%20Nginx.

They are different tools for different purposes:

• php-cli is the standalone tool for running a PHP scripts in the same way you would run it from the command line: php somescript.php. It seems you can also use it to base other images from.

  This variant contains the PHP CLI tool with default mods. If you need a web server, this is probably not the image you are looking for. It is designed to be used both as a throw away container (mount your source code and start the container to start your app), as well as a base from which to build other images.

• 
  

• php-fpm is the FastCGI server implementation of PHP which you would use with a FastCGI compliant web server such as Apache or Nginx.

  This variant contains PHP-FPM, which is a FastCGI implementation for PHP. See the PHP-FPM website for more information about PHP-FPM. 

  - Used by Apache event/worker with reverse proxy  

Note: both php-fpm and php-cli will have php.ini file they are located in /etc/php/version

Older variants:

• php-apache which is just Apache prefork configured with mod_php