This is follow up to my previous post about EasyEngine v4.
I have covered most pain areas last time. We were hoping to get a PHP based minimal release by July 2017 but we failed.
v4 ETA
I do not have any ETA for v4 this time. It may happen next month, next year or I might give up on the project someday (unlikely).
Last time announcing an ETA created a lot of pressure on me and my team. So I am avoiding committing to a date for something we still consider a side project at rtCamp.
The only promise I can make is that if we abandon EasyEngine, I will be the first to let you know. Sorry but I do not like to sugar coat reality.
So walk along at your own risk!
What are we doing?
It has been 6 months since the last blog post and almost 14 months since last release.
I know the delay is more than expected. We did write some code for v4 here and here. But since v3 => v4 is not just a code rewrite, it is going to take more time.
The awesome performance you get with EasyEngine took more three years of research and tweaking to figure out all the magic hidden inside WordPress and Nginx.
This time we are attempting to make development workflow easy which needs a lot of research in a different area.
Still for better utilization of resources, we divided our already limited resources into two groups – research and development. We did not have dedicated research team before.
Research team
Research team's current primary focus area is exploring docker and possibility with containers at large. This group led by Mriyam studied many tools such as Dokku, Flynn, Swarm, Kubernetes, Deis, Helm, Mesos and more. In case you are just interested in the topic, this post covers a quick overview of these Docker tools.
We are still away from using any of these in production but we have explored enough to have confidence that docker is way forward!
The learnings are being added at Docker and WordPress subsection in tutorials.
Link: Read how we are planning to use Docker in EasyEngine v4
Development team
The development team for next v4 needs to be an expert in PHP command line development.
As the v4 development cannot start before research team finalizes a docker (container) based architecture and other underpinnings, we asked them to contribute to the WP-CLI codebase.
One of them Siddharth contributed so much to the WP-CLI that he is now a core committer to that WP-CLI project.
So what’s next?
Since dev team cannot code unless docker and other architectural decisions are not finalized, the immediate goal is to get this docker-thing sorted.
Unfortunately, most docker usage in production is by big folks running multiple servers. We want to bring some of that power with a lot of simplicity to our favorite $5/month VPS.
The high availability and fault tolerance are not possible to achieve on a single machine, but we still want docker for its simplicity and portability. The goal this time is to make a WordPress developer's life easy and for that, it’s crucial to bridge the gap between local dev machine and the remote server. This is where docker makes sense to us!
So if you are a docker expert, we need you immediately. Of course, we need more helping hands by all means!
I wish I were a Docker expert, but then I probably would need EasyEngine 4.
I would have chosen to use Docker as an alternative, for myself, only the level of complexity is definitely not for the feint-hearted.
So, I am very pleased you’re going in that direction.
Thanks for a positive comment! ❤️
Docker is really complicated but worth going after. We hope to make it “easy” for all of us! 🙂
I have published more about our docker plans here – https://easyengine.io/blog/how-we-plan-to-use-docker-in-easyengine-v4/
I am a big big fan of EasyEngine but sadly not a programmer ( or probably that’s the reason, I got attracted towards the easiness of EasyEngine ).
It’s so heartbreaking even to think about abandoning EasyEngine. In fact, I am recently moving from Cloudways Managed hosting services to directly on AWS server because of the easiness and superfast capability of this awesome tool.
While talking to Rahul about the future of EasyEngine once, he had said that it isn’t the deficit of money, but the lack of hardcore developers behind so much delay in EE V4.0
So, I request all the developers who are reading this post or comment to please get involved with rtCommunity.
Best wishes,
Nitesh
For me EE was simply a command line utility to install optimized WP instances on VPS. Docker is pretty cool, but it solves a different set of problems. My point is I love EE like it is. It just needs to be maintained. What can we/I do to help support the immediate needs?
The immediate need is to update nginx package. This can be done from – https://github.com/EasyEngine/nginx-build (check wiki – https://github.com/EasyEngine/nginx-build/wiki) for more details.
Re: Docker
There are many ways to use Docker. The way we are planning to use it is very different. Most users won’t even notice. That is the goal in fact!
Why do you targeting Digital Ocean’s $5 server when nowadays you could get the same simplicity and better performance for the same price in other places?
Compare this offers: DO, Vultr, Linode, Scaleway. Or some benchmarks. And that are only simple, per hour offers. I got much better performance with Scaleway’s €5.99 plan (Starter X86-64) than I did have on DO $10 (for server running EasyEngine).
My point is that times since DO was new kid in the block with new, awesome offer have changed, they do have competition now and if we are completely changing for v4, why not take into account reality that technology improved since EE was introduced.
I’m aware of options. We also use Linode and Vultr.
The DO example is just to highlight the goal is to keep EasyEngine low on resources so it should work with 512MB machine smoothly.
I like the 512 minimum requirement, so that it can work with AWS EC2 t2.nano machines 🙂