Timeline for flyctl - > fly rename

#1

Hi all,

I’m scripting a lot of fly commands and I’m curious when the official move, if ever, will be from flyctl to fly usage. The docs occasionally have both.

I think I read somewhere this was the case, but maybe it’s completely imagined.

#2

Quoting the README from the GitHub repo:

Note: Most installations of flyctl also alias flyctl to fly as a command name and this will become the default name in the future. During the transition, note that where you see flyctl as a command it can be replaced with fly .

#3

We’ll keep an alias to flyctl at the very least. So you’re safe to use either form. :slight_smile:

#4

I guess I’m wondering when the official switch will happen. That is, when fly is not the alias, but rather the main one.

Right now, nix’s fly package is flyctl but should be updated to fly once the switch is made.

See here: nixpkgs/default.nix at master · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub

#5

Ah! So we vaguely plan to make that change but we haven’t scheduled it yet. We may not ever rename the binary, just changing our docs to use the fly alias might be enough.

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#6

Given it seems fly is fully usable now would be great to more or less find/replace flyctl with fly in the docs. There are still many references to both flyctl and also fly. Having one canonical command–seems to be fly–removes a lot of potential confusion.

#7

@wsvincent I agree that fly is nicer. I use that alias. However there is an argument for using flyctl in the docs. For example if you Google a command, like fly status vs flyctl status. For me fly status returns a load of flight search trackers (naturally) but flyctl status returns the fly.io docs page as the first result. I don’t know how many people use the search flow but that would be one small argument against switching :thinking:

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#8

I have the same misgiving about searchability, but we are moving toward writing fly in docs that aren’t specifically flyctl ones and noting the alias frequently. It’s true the frequent switching in docs is a source of confusion and it’s one of many things on a very long to-do list! :grimacing:

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#9

FYI, fly is not fully usable: it doesn’t work within GitHub Actions where I need to explicitly use flyctl.

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