Truman continues to steer his wrecked sailboat towards the infinitely receding horizon. All is calm until we see the bow of the boat suddenly strike a huge, blue wall, knocking Truman off his feet. Truman recovers and clambers across the deck to the bow of the boat. Looming above him out of the sea is a cyclorama of colossal dimensions. The sky he has been sailing towards is nothing but a painted backdrop. (Andrew M. Niccol, The Truman Show)

On December 8 2020, Taylor Otwell announced the launch of  Laravel Sail, a development environment based on Docker, along with a large overhaul of Laravel’s documentation:

The announcement caused a wave of excitement across the community, as a lot of people identified the new environment as a way to finally get into Docker; but it also left some confusion in its wake, as Sail introduces an approach to development that is quite different from its predecessors and isn’t exactly a guide to becoming a Docker expert.

This post is about what to expect from Laravel Sail, how it works and how to make the most of it; it is also a plea to developers to break away from it, in favour of their own, tailored solution.

But before we get there, we need to take a look under the deck, starting with a high-level explanation of what Sail is.

#laravel #docker #laravel-sail #web-development #php #mongodb