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The September Fly Changelog: New Names and Easier Updates

September’s changes have been all about making the Fly CLI easier to install, update, and use on every platform including Windows 10. And we’ve added some new ways to build and deploy websites. Read on for details.

Some common requests are addressed this month. One is ‘can you let us type “fly” instead of “flyctl”?’, and it is a shorter command, that is true. Another is can you ‘make updating flyctl easier?’, something we are more than happy to do. And in September, we did both.

Fly and Flyctl

We’ve modified the installer for the Fly CLI so that while it installs itself as flyctl it also sets up a symbolic link to the fly command name. Once you are up to date with Flyctl, you’ll be able to use fly as your preferred command. We’re taking this carefully as this is the start of a migration which will end with fly being the actual name of the CLI app.

Easier Updating

The Fly CLI regularly checks in to see if there’s a new version of itself available. We’ve previously enhanced this feature so that it could show people the command they needed to run to update. Well, in our September updates, we’ve gone one better. Now, when there is a new version available, all you need to do is run fly version update and the Fly CLI will take care of the rest.

Extra Builtin Builders

Two new static builders for creating static web sites quickly — hugo-static and staticplus — have been added. The former runs a Hugo build and then deploys the results as a static website. The latter added HTTPS redirection for sites with a custom domain, but we’ll be retiring that soon, thanks to a combination of a change being accepted upstream and a big new feature coming for Fly builtins in a future release.

Windows 10 Improvements

Better Windows installation and updating using PowerShell have been implemented. We’d love to hear what you think if you use Fly and Windows 10.

Init Extended

There are also two new ways to initialize an app with fly init. When you really want to always overwrite the existing configuration, --overwrite will do that job for you. And when you want to do the exact opposite — create a new app but not rewrite the configuration — then --nowrite is the option for you.

Other Changes

Updated and new commands for the upcoming DNS+domains feature have been incorporated in this release too; read the feature preview on the Fly Community site for more about that.

This is the Fly Changelog where we list all significant changes to the Fly platform, tooling, and websites. You can also use the RSS feed of just changelog posts available on fly.io/changelog.xml or consult our dedicated ChangeLog page with all the recent updates.

30th September

flyctl: Version 0.0.144 released

  • We’ve changed the commands for managing our upcoming domain support: domains and dns-records are subcommands for the functionality. Background and details on the preview in the feature preview
  • A new init --nowrite option has been added which allows an app to be created without overwriting the current fly.toml. This allows multiple deployments under different app names (new alternate app names are recorded in fly.alias)
  • Builtins now avoid using Alpine as a base image due to reported DNS instability in the Alpine release
  • The Deno builder no longer requires a deps.ts file.

17th September

flyctl: Version 0.0.143 released

  • version update command added - automatically downloads and installs the latest version.
  • Docker authentication used to log into Docker hub if present.
  • Add a Windows build script
  • Powershell-based Windows 10 installer
  • Listing of failing allocations in the status monitor is now more effective
  • Cleaner display of failed allocations when watching allocations
  • Cleaner table views of builtins (more content and fewer lines)
  • Version parsing made more reliable and permissive

15th September

flyctl: Version 0.0.142 released

  • Fixed fly//flyctl links in homebrew formula

14th September

flyctl: Version 0.0.141 released

  • Node builtin: Now performs a npm run build if a build step exists.
  • New staticplus builtin added for custom domains.
  • Added --overwrite flag to fly init to always overwrite fly.toml when creating an app.
  • flyctl can also be run as fly now and a symlink is created in the installer to allow both versions to be used. The plan is to transition to fly in the future.
  • Requirement for app-name made more consistent across commands.
  • Fix flagging of pre-release versions in the installer.
  • Builtins now note they use internal port 8080 in their documentation.
  • 32-bit builds are no longer created for Fly CLI releases.

27th August

flyctl: Version 0.0.140 released

  • Deployments now say, at the very end, if there was an allocation failure even when a rollback has taken place
  • Restart counts in allocations are now more accurate