Logbook - 2022-04-20

Summary

Fly.io’s April 20, 2022 logbook combines a recent changelog with an account of how the company produces updates for a distributed platform running apps in VMs on hardware around the world. It records added IAD capacity, backup regions disabled by default, flyctl releases with NuxtJS and RedwoodJS deployment support, and reliability improvements to postgres operations, failover handling, error reporting, builders, logs, and releases. The post says commits and status updates often fail to capture completed user-relevant work or its impact. It therefore asks engineers to write updates that explain both what changed and why it matters. Collection is automated through a Slack bot and an app that collates entries into feeds, while the team plans to cultivate stronger changelog habits.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Backup regions were disabled by default to reduce deployments ending up in unexpected regions.

2. 2

   flyctl moved nearly all postgres operations from SSH to HTTP, with the post citing increased reliability and releases that refactored several operations.

3. 3

   A Slack bot and app automate collecting and collating updates, but the post says this does not solve the harder work of identifying meaningful changes and explaining their user impact.