The Laravel Podcast Inside Forge 2.0 and Laravel VPS with James Brooks
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Aug 25, 2025 Join James Brooks, the engineering team lead for Laravel Forge, as he shares his inspiring journey from aspiring stuntman to software engineer. He discusses the evolution of Forge, the technical challenges of unit testing, and the exciting features of Forge 2.0, including new VPS capabilities. Explore the benefits of Laravel VPS and the importance of community within the Laravel ecosystem. With insights into deployment efficiencies and user experience enhancements, this conversation showcases the collaborative spirit that drives innovation in Laravel.
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Community Work Led To A Job
- James contributed to Laravel community projects and won a Laracon ticket which led to direct contact with Taylor Otwell.
- A small Envoy feature contribution and a CV led to him being hired at Laravel in 2019.
Forge 2.0 Started As A Cross-Team Vision
- Forge 2.0 began from a company offsite brainstorming session that prioritized organizations, teams, health checks, and zero-downtime deploys.
- The Cloud redesign and shared design language guided Forge's bigger overhaul and product vision.
Fake SSH In Tests To Avoid Slow Integration Runs
- Test Forge by faking SSH/tunnel classes instead of running slow full server integrations.
- Validate commands, scripts, and generated parameters via unit tests rather than provisioning live servers frequently.