With Vapor Cloud shutting down, when will the book be updated?

I am starting to get through the book. However I recently learnt that Vapor Cloud is shutting down. Is the team working on updating the book to remove references to Vapor Cloud and replace it with some of the other options like maybe AWS or Heroku?

I am completely new to server-side and also to databases. So it would be a huge help if I don’t have to learn something obsolete and then relearn things again.

Hi! Yep we’re putting out an update that removes the Vapor Cloud section. The latest release (that you can currently download) has chapters on Heroku, AWS and Docker which should give you what you need!

Of the core 17 chapters of the book (Chapters 5-21), 12 of them end with instructions on how to deploy them in Vapor Cloud. From what I understand, we can learn about Heroku/AWS/Docker from the relevant chapters at the end only (Ch 32-34).

I am requesting the team to replace the current Vapor Cloud hand-holding in the above mentioned (5-21) chapters with one of the 3 other services.

Most of us who purchased this book, I presume, are beginners or have very little experience with server-side programming and setting up these 3 services. Without the hand-holding, it would be very difficult for us to derive the relevant steps for Heroku/AWS/Docker from their dedicated chapters at the end. We would be very likely to get stuck repeatedly without explicit instructions, rendering the purchase of this book of little value.

I understand that this is not a trivial task, but I ask you to consider this: 2-3 experienced people (who happen to have MADE the product!!!) working hard once, or thousands of complete novice readers, grappling in the dark, trying to find their way.

@gitap the current release of the book that you can download right now (the second edition) only has one chapter that mentions Vapor Cloud. Chapters 5-21 no longer contain instructions on deploying to Vapor Cloud. Which version do you have?

@0xtim Aah! I was looking at the Contents in this page: https://store.raywenderlich.com/products/server-side-swift-with-vapor

That’s where I got that count from. I have purchased the book recently and have only covered the first 3 chapters. Anyways, I just downloaded both versions of the book and compared them. I noticed that the Deploying to Vapor Cloud section has been deleted from the chapters I was talking about.

But my request still stands. Without the hand-holding which let us deploy to Vapor Cloud and have a truly functioning app, it is simply impossible for beginners of the like of us to figure out the steps at the end of each chapter.

It would be extremely helpful if, in those chapters, you include instructions on deploying to a service of your choosing (Heroku/AWS/Docker) where the Vapor Cloud instructions used to be. What are your thoughts on the idea?

We removed it from each chapter because it was very repetitive and didn’t really add much. The instructions for deploying at the end of each chapter are almost the same as deploying from fresh, just without the original set up. And adding multiple deployment options to each chapter would make them too big unfortunately.

So for Heroku, you can follow the deploying with Heroku chapter whenever you like and then every time you want to deploy, you just need to commit and push to Heroku and you’ll update your deployed code.