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Trellis Drops Vagrant for Lima, and I’m All for It

Trellis Drops Vagrant for Lima, and I’m All for It

January 3, 2026
3 min read
wordpress
roots
trellis
devops
ansible

Introduction

Every once in a while, a change comes along that makes you stop and say: yeah, this is exactly why I use these tools.
Trellis dropping Vagrant and Parallels in favor of Lima VMs is one of those moments.

I’ve been using the Roots ecosystem for years, and this move feels like the natural evolution of an already rock‑solid developer experience. Faster local environments, better parity with production, and tooling that finally feels modern again.

Goodbye Vagrant, Hello Lima

Vagrant had a good run. For a long time, it was the default way to get reproducible development environments. But over time it became slow, fragile, and increasingly misaligned with modern macOS and Linux workflows.

Lima changes everything.

With Lima-powered Trellis VMs, you get:

  • Faster boot times and lower resource usage
  • Native-feeling Linux environments on macOS
  • Better alignment with Docker and container-based workflows
  • Fewer layers of abstraction and fewer things to break

Most importantly, development, staging, and production finally feel identical. Same Ubuntu version. Same Nginx, PHP, and MariaDB stack. No surprises. You can also deploy it cheap on a VPS for around $5 per month.

The Magic of “trellis new”

This is where Trellis really shines.

Terminal window
trellis new example.com

That single command generates:

A fully configured Trellis project A modern Bedrock WordPress install A clean, opinionated structure that scales From there, provisioning production is just as simple:

Terminal window
cd example.com/trellis
trellis provision production

Within minutes, you have:

Ubuntu 24.04 Nginx PHP 8.3 MariaDB Let’s Encrypt SSL Security hardening via Ansible No fragile bash scripts. No manual server setup. Just infrastructure as code.

Zero‑Downtime Deployments That Just Work. Deploying a site with Trellis still feels like cheating:

Terminal window
trellis deploy production

Behind the scenes, Trellis performs an atomic deployment:

Behind the scenes, Trellis performs an atomic deployment:

Creates a timestamped release directory Installs Composer dependencies Atomically switches symlinks Reloads PHP-FPM Keeps your site online the entire time

current -> releases/20241002144230 releases/ 20241002144230/ 20241002143015/ shared/

If something goes wrong, rolling back is instant. This is the kind of deployment workflow you expect from enterprise platforms—now available for WordPress.

Bedrock, Sage, and Acorn: WordPress, Grown Up Trellis is powerful on its own, but it truly shines when paired with the rest of the Roots ecosystem.

Bedrock

Composer-based WordPress dependency management Environment-based configuration Clean separation of app code and content No more committing WordPress core or plugins to Git

Sage

  • Modern frontend tooling
  • Blade templating
  • A Laravel-inspired structure
  • A theme that feels like a real application, not a pile of PHP files

Acorn

Acorn is the secret weapon. It brings Laravel’s container, service providers, and modern PHP patterns into WordPress—without fighting it.

Suddenly, WordPress development becomes clean, testable, and maintainable.

Performance, Security, and Sanity Included

Trellis ships with a production-ready LEMP stack out of the box:

  • Nginx FastCGI “micro” caching
  • Built-in Redis support
  • Fail2ban and sensible security defaults
  • Automatic SSL certificates and renewals
  • A+ SSL Labs ratings

Everything is defined in version-controlled YAML files. No dashboards. No click‑ops. Just clarity.

Why Dropping Vagrant Matters

The move from Vagrant to Lima isn’t just technical—it’s philosophical.

It shows that the Roots team:

  • Prioritizes developer experience
  • Embraces modern tooling
  • Isn’t afraid to make breaking changes for the better

This decision future‑proofs Trellis and reinforces why Roots remains miles ahead of traditional WordPress workflows.

Conclusion

I’ve deployed and maintained multiple sites with Trellis, and it continues to be a superior experience every single time. Trellis, Bedrock, Sage, and Acorn aren’t just tools—they represent a better way to build WordPress.

  • Treat WordPress like real software.
  • Treat servers like code.
  • Respect developers’ time.

Huge shout‑out to the Roots team for continuing to push the WordPress ecosystem forward. The move to Lima VMs is yet another reason this toolkit remains the most sane way to do WordPress today.

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