Wheels 4.0 — the inner loop doesn't need Docker anymore

[bpamiri]

This post is about the least-advertised major change in 4.0: the developer experience overhaul. Short version — you no longer need Docker running to be productive against the Wheels codebase or against a Wheels app.

The 60-second workflow

# One-time install
brew tap wheels-dev/wheels
brew install wheels             # macOS / Linux; Windows: scoop-wheels bucket

# Scaffold
wheels new myapp
cd myapp
wheels start

# You're serving HTTP.

# Generate
wheels generate model User email:string firstName:string
wheels generate controller Users index create show
wheels generate scaffold Post title:string body:text

# Test
wheels test run                       # full suite, ~60s
wheels test run filter="User*"        # filtered
wheels test run --coverage            # with coverage report

No Docker. No CommandBox. No external CLI alongside the framework CLI.

Why

Pre-4.0, the test loop looked like this:

1. Bring up Docker Compose with an engine container + a database container (~60-120s cold).
2. Hit an HTTP endpoint to run the test suite.
3. Wait for results.

After a few rounds of "I have to wait for Docker" that friction hurts. #2063 moved local testing to the new Wheels CLI + SQLite — same stack CI uses (#2032), so "passes locally" and "passes CI" became the same claim.

Cross-engine testing (Adobe CF, BoxLang, MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server, CockroachDB) is still available via Docker for pre-merge coverage. The matrix job count went from 42 to 8 (#1939) via engine-grouped testing — substantial CI speedup.

CLI surface

The wheels binary ships with the framework. Day-to-day commands:

Task	Command
Scaffold app	wheels new myapp
Start server	wheels start
Generate	wheels generate model/controller/scaffold/admin/seed ...
Migrate	wheels migrate latest / up / down / info
Test	wheels test run
Seed	wheels seed
Reload	wheels reload
Analyze	wheels analyze
Jobs daemon	wheels jobs work / status / retry / purge / monitor
Deploy	wheels deploy (see Post 4)
MCP	wheels mcp wheels (stdio MCP server)

Auto-migration diff-from-model:

wheels dbmigrate diff User --rename=full_name:fullName --write --name=rename_name

AI coding assistant integration

The mcp command wires Wheels tools into AI coding assistants via stdio MCP. Configure your IDE:

{"mcpServers":{"wheels":{"command":"wheels","args":["mcp","wheels"]}}}

Or run wheels mcp setup and it generates .mcp.json + .opencode.json automatically. Your assistant can then call wheels_generate, wheels_migrate, wheels_test, wheels_seed, wheels_routes, wheels_info directly.

Links

• Full audit §13 — Wheels CLI
• wheels deploy deep dive (Post 4) — for the deploy side
• Browser testing reference

Question for the thread

If you last used the Wheels CLI on CommandBox and bounced off, which friction point was the one that made you stop? Ergonomics feedback on the new wheels binary is especially welcome before 4.0 GA.

Read the full post: https://blog.wheels.dev/posts/lucli-zero-docker-developer-experience/