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What's New with Kool 3.0.0: Kool.dev Cloud Setup, Build and Windows via WSL2

Checkout the highlights of what was shipped in the latest Kool release 3.0.0. Interactive cloud deploy configuration helper, preset updates, and much more.

kool is a free, open-source CLI tool that makes local development with Docker super easy. Learn more. And now it can also help you move your containerized web app to the cloud with the Developer Experience you always dreamed of. Check out Kool.dev Cloud GA.

It's a new command intended to streamline the extra configuration necessary to deploy any Docker Compose based local app to Kool.dev Cloud.

To use it, run:

kool cloud setup

The command above is going to:

  • Go through each of the services defined in your docker-compose.yml file.
  • Ask if you want to include that service to be deployed or not.
  • If you have mounts, it offers you:
    • Persistent paths to named volumes.
    • Building a custom image to COPY that volume contents to the deploying image.
      • In this case, it will bootstrap a Dockerfile for that service for you.
  • After asking for all information, you will have a kool.cloud.yml configuration file for your environment.

You should still review the configuration for adjustments like environment variables definition and other details. Most importantly, you must review any newly created Dockerfile to make sure that your app will build correctly (i.e., install dependencies, compile, clear caches, etc).

Once that is done, you are ready to grab your KOOL_API_TOKEN from your Kool.dev Cloud panel, and deploy your application with kool cloud deploy.

We have changed the default building strategy for kool cloud deploy - any Dockerfile that you need to build before deploying will have that building process take place in your host machine where you are running kool cloud deploy on.

This offers better visibility on build issues as well as control and security. Once done, the deploy image will be pushed to Kool.dev Cloud private registry to be used during deployment.

As a major change, we have discontinued and removed our native build of the kool CLI for Windows. This comes mostly because of our lack of testing and maintenance on that platform.

As we build kool on Mac and Linux, all the teams currently using and leveraging kool but are based on Windows they do so by running it under a WSL2 environment! Docker Desktop for Windows integrates seamlessly with it, so you can have the best of both words! Running kool on WSL2 is very straightforward and offers you all the benefits as if you were on another *nix platform.

We have updated our presets as needed - offering new versions of frameworks as well as languages.

  • PHP 8.3 option
  • Node 21 option (default)

We have finally expanded our documentation for Kool.dev Cloud - the crucial missing piece on the Kool.dev journey to complete Developer Experience when it comes to web apps running on containers.


We welcome contributors to the Open Source CLI tool - new presets and recipes that facilitate your day-to-day can be extremely helpful for others in the community, consider sharing your experience setting up superb local development environments using containers. Leverage Kool.dev Cloud afterward to move that workload to the cloud.

You can help us by following and sharing our content on Twitter and LinkedIn.

And as an Open Source project - starring our main repository means the world for us <3.

Join Kool.dev Cloud today and leverage the full experience we have designed for you.

kool.dev
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