0.4.0 - 2026-10-20

Release Notes

Parcela runs each environment's processes itself, so Process Compose is no longer needed; only Caddy is. parcela.yaml does not change. Before upgrading, run parcela down --all-projects and parcela proxy stop: environments and a proxy started by 0.3 or earlier cannot be stopped, taken over or reached by 0.4.

Added

• up --lan and up --tailscale (and restart) also serve one environment to other devices: at .local names on the LAN through mDNS, or on the tailnet through tailscale serve. PARCELA_SHARE_HOSTS lists the shared hostnames for a dev server's host check.
• Colors on a terminal: help, errors, and a color per process in parcela logs. NO_COLOR turns them off.
• hooks.teardown runs on parcela rm, for example to drop the environment's database. A failed teardown keeps the environment registered.
• install.sh also installs Caddy into ~/.local/bin when no supported version is on PATH, checking the download against its release checksums. It checks Parcela's own download the same way, on macOS too, prints how to add ~/.local/bin to PATH instead of editing shell profiles, and lists the files it wrote. --help lists its options.
• parcela logs --follow streams new lines from every process, or one.
• -d is short for --detach.
• parcela logs works after down too, until the next run: each process writes to log/processes/<name>.log in the runtime directory, cut to <name>.log.1 past 16 MB.
• Nightly builds of main: install.sh --nightly installs the newest one. Builds other than a release tag report the commit in --version, like 0.3.0+20261019.4fed620.
• The first up in a terminal trusts Parcela's certificate authority when it is not trusted yet, behind the system password prompt, once per authority. Never without a terminal; PARCELA_NO_TRUST=1 turns it off.
• parcela proxy install on macOS makes URLs portless (https://hello.localhost): launchd owns 127.0.0.1:443 and relays each connection to the proxy as you. uninstall removes it, and refuses a user name that could change the service it installs.
• http.wildcard: true sends every subdomain of a service's host to it, for subdomain-per-tenant apps.
• --lan-ip picks the LAN address for --lan. Both refuse a public address. PARCELA_LAN=1 and PARCELA_TAILSCALE=1 work like the flags.
• A JSON Schema for parcela.yaml at https://parcela.davafons.com/schema/v1.json, generated from the parser. parcela init adds the line editors use to find it.

Changed

• Parcela supervises the processes: each runs with bash -c (or sh -c) in its own process group, starts once its dependencies are ready, and stops in reverse dependency order, SIGTERM then SIGKILL after 10 seconds. Until the environment is first ready, a failed hook, an exited HTTP service or a process that exits nonzero stops up at once and names it, instead of waiting for the readiness timeout. Foreground up prefixes each line with its process's name.
• If an owner dies, the next up, down or recover adopts its processes by their recorded birth identity, and down stops ones that outlived it instead of refusing.
• On macOS, sockets live in the per-user temporary directory instead of /tmp/parcela-<uid>, so another user cannot block Parcela by creating that directory first.
• Removed: the hidden --process-compose option, parcela doctor's Process Compose check, child_pid in status --json, and log/process-compose.log. A detached owner's owner.log holds process output only until the run is first ready.
• status --json process states are exactly pending, running, stopping, restarting, completed, exited and skipped, instead of Process Compose's names.
• The proxy listens on one HTTPS port, and URLs leave it out when it is 443. The forwarded "standard ports" mode and its port-80 listener are gone. --port accepts any port the system lets a normal user listen on.
• If the proxy dies while environments run, they start it again within a few seconds. parcela proxy stop still stops it for good.
• restart picks up added, removed and renamed services; down and up are no longer needed for that.
• up on a ready environment prints its URLs and exits 0, like docker compose up -d.
• Clearer errors: a readiness timeout says what each service answered, a busy --backend-port names its holder, and an unknown service or task lists the valid names.
• --help lists the global options in their own section. status --all is gone; use ls.

Fixed

• Readiness checks stop once a service is ready, so they no longer fill its log.
• --backend-port also refuses a port another program holds on 0.0.0.0 or [::], naming the holder before anything starts.
• Long branch and workspace names are cut to fit a hostname, ending in a short hash, instead of failing up.
• An up interrupted or killed before it launched anything no longer leaves the environment stuck as starting: Ctrl-C during startup stops it cleanly, and the next up or down releases its ports.

Install parcela 0.4.0

Install prebuilt binaries via shell script

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/davafons/parcela/releases/download/v0.4.0/parcela-installer.sh | sh

Download parcela 0.4.0

File	Platform	Checksum
parcela-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz	Apple Silicon macOS	checksum
parcela-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz	Intel macOS	checksum
parcela-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz	ARM64 Linux	checksum
parcela-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz	x64 Linux	checksum