context
as part of ongoing improvements to our docker image publishing strategy, we've consolidated all image publishing to the main prefecthq/prefect and prefecthq/prefect-client dockerhub repos. dev/prerelease builds now use dev tags in the main repos instead of separate -dev repos.
problem
we have a prefect dev command group that:
- is rarely (if ever) used in practice
- still references the deprecated
-dev repo naming in src/prefect/utilities/dockerutils.py:82
- was primarily relevant when we maintained separate dev dockerhub repos
the commands provide local development tooling:
- hot-reloading dev server (
api, start, ui)
- building docs/ui (
build-docs, build-ui)
- building local docker images (
build-image, container)
proposal
remove the entire prefect dev subgroup or propose an improved one that speaks to patterns contributors actually use in 2026
affected files
src/prefect/cli/dev.py - main command group (394 lines)src/prefect/utilities/dockerutils.py - image naming logic (line 82)tests/cli/test_dev.py - testsdocs/v3/api-ref/python/prefect-cli-dev.mdx - docsscripts/build-all-dev-images - helper script
context
as part of ongoing improvements to our docker image publishing strategy, we've consolidated all image publishing to the main
prefecthq/prefectandprefecthq/prefect-clientdockerhub repos. dev/prerelease builds now use dev tags in the main repos instead of separate-devrepos.problem
we have a
prefect devcommand group that:-devrepo naming insrc/prefect/utilities/dockerutils.py:82the commands provide local development tooling:
api,start,ui)build-docs,build-ui)build-image,container)proposal
remove the entire
prefect devsubgroup or propose an improved one that speaks to patterns contributors actually use in 2026affected files
src/prefect/cli/dev.py- main command group (394 lines)src/prefect/utilities/dockerutils.py- image naming logic (line 82)tests/cli/test_dev.py- testsdocs/v3/api-ref/python/prefect-cli-dev.mdx- docsscripts/build-all-dev-images- helper script