Operations & deploy

Once DeskFlow works locally, this section covers how to run and ship it — from php pionia serve on port 8000 to RoadRunner workers, OPcache preload, and zero-downtime deploys for Northwind Studio.

Who this is for

You have a working DeskFlow task board API (task, member, project services) and need to operate it in dev and production — CLI commands, persistent workers, logs under storage/logs/, and deploy-time optimization without rewriting application code.

What you will learn

Which CLI commands Alex runs daily vs only on deploy
How to move from the built-in server to RoadRunner workers
Where to configure caching, logging, maintenance mode, and /stats metrics

Before you start

DeskFlow tutorial Step 1 — DeskFlow running locally
Application structure — storage/, environment/settings.ini

How it works

flowchart LR Dev[php pionia serve :8000] --> RR[php pionia runserver] RR --> Opt[php pionia optimize --production] Opt --> Ship[Deploy + restart workers] Ship --> Obs[Logs / stats / cache]

Development uses a single-process PHP server. Production adds persistent workers, optional OPcache preload, shared cache stores, and observability — all configured in your app, not in framework vendor code.

Daily commands

Task	Guide
CLI overview	Commands
Persistent workers	RoadRunner
Deploy checklist	Production performance
Zero-downtime deploys	Maintenance mode

Observability & background work

Task	Guide
Logs	Logging
Request metrics	Developer stats
Post-response jobs	Background work
Cache stores	Caching

Production checklist

composer install --no-dev -o
php pionia optimize --production
php pionia runserver --detach
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1/ping

Common mistakes

Running optimize on every code change — use it at deploy time; local dev does not need preload or bootstrap caches.
Expecting php pionia serve to match production — HTTP/1 only, no job queue; use RoadRunner for production-like testing.
Forgetting to restart workers after deploy when opcache.validate_timestamps=0 — stale bytecode until FPM/RR reload.
Leaving /stats open in production without STATS_TOKEN — see Developer stats.