DNSControl
DNSControl v5 is feature-frozen with a ship date, and rc9 is pure provider cleanup
Comparison · Infra & APIs
Depot vs q2
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Depot and q2 — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Depot vs q2: at a glance
| Feature | Depot | q2 |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | Infra & APIs | Infra & APIs |
| Velocity score | 6.3 | 6.3 |
| Sparks · 30d | 1 | 1 |
| Top themes | ci-cd, build-acceleration, test-intelligence, git-hosting | rust-rewrite, publishing-toolchain, quarto, theming |
| Last editorial update | 5d ago | 9h ago |
| Website | — | Visit → |
What is Depot?
Depot keeps absorbing the CI stack — tests, networking, runners, now its own git host.
Depot has moved well past build caching. Test results reached general availability in July with org-wide flaky, slow, and recurring failure analytics plus timing-based shard splitting; Sherlock's AI analysis became available on any run rather than only failed ones; and CI jobs can join a Tailscale tailnet to reach private services. The runner fleet now defaults to macOS 26 on M4 hardware, Depot CI understands GitHub stacked pull requests, and Depot Code — a diskless git server backed by blob storage — entered private beta.
What is q2?
After two releases pulling ahead, q2 spends v0.23.0 back on parity: light/dark theming.
q2 is the Quarto team's Rust reimplementation of the publishing toolchain, shipping as a statically linked single binary with minisign-signed archives and a bundled Quarto Hub MCP server, still marked experimental and not production-ready. The cadence holds at roughly a release a day through mid-August, with raw commit logs standing in for curated notes. v0.22.0 was the break in the pattern — llms.txt site output and a live-share preview, the first capability the original toolchain does not have. v0.23.0 goes straight back to closing the parity gap, and does it at epic scale.
Depot vs q2: editorial side-by-side
Depot
6.3INFRA · APIS
Depot keeps absorbing the CI stack — tests, networking, runners, now its own git host.
◆ Current state
Depot has moved well past build caching. Test results reached general availability in July with org-wide flaky, slow, and recurring failure analytics plus timing-based shard splitting; Sherlock's AI analysis became available on any run rather than only failed ones; and CI jobs can join a Tailscale tailnet to reach private services. The runner fleet now defaults to macOS 26 on M4 hardware, Depot CI understands GitHub stacked pull requests, and Depot Code — a diskless git server backed by blob storage — entered private beta.
◆ Where it's heading
The pattern is absorbing each adjacent piece of the pipeline that Depot's position already gives it data about. It runs the builds, so it owns test timing, so it can balance shards; it runs the jobs, so it can diagnose them; it hosts the runners, so it can wire private networking into them. Depot Code extends the same logic upstream to source hosting, which would close the loop between repository and runner. A quieter parallel thread keeps moving SDK- and dashboard-only settings into the CLI, stated explicitly as making projects configurable by agents and scripts.
◆ Prediction
Depot Code widening past private beta and binding more tightly to CI is the move the rest of the window sets up. The test work is also positioned to go from reporting to selection — skipping tests a change cannot affect — since Depot now holds the timing and failure history that would require, though the entries stop short of saying so.
q2
6.3INFRA · APIS
After two releases pulling ahead, q2 spends v0.23.0 back on parity: light/dark theming.
◆ Current state
q2 is the Quarto team's Rust reimplementation of the publishing toolchain, shipping as a statically linked single binary with minisign-signed archives and a bundled Quarto Hub MCP server, still marked experimental and not production-ready. The cadence holds at roughly a release a day through mid-August, with raw commit logs standing in for curated notes. v0.22.0 was the break in the pattern — llms.txt site output and a live-share preview, the first capability the original toolchain does not have. v0.23.0 goes straight back to closing the parity gap, and does it at epic scale.
◆ Where it's heading
The light-dark epic is the shape of how this team retires a Quarto 1 feature: a design doc, then ThemeConfig growing a parsed dark variant, dual theme compilation with color-scheme emission, attributed stylesheet links, a color-mode toggle runtime, an accessibility-aware highlight-style reader, a brand light/dark seam, and an end-to-end verification pass against quarto-web before the docs land. One phase (D) was deferred with its options recorded rather than dropped. Around it, panel-tabset support lands, format.html.css is finally copied and rebased per page, and the llms companion output gains a link-format attribute so authors control where companion links point — the one thread tying this release back to the v0.22.0 work.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining Q1 parity items to keep setting the release agenda, with the deferred light-dark phase D and the freshly opened panel-tabset plan the two named strands most likely to fill the next few tags. npx distribution for the standalone Quarto Hub MCP bundle is still the only distribution item the notes explicitly call planned.
Alternatives to Depot and q2
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Depot or q2.
Casdoor
Casdoor is spending its release cadence moving auth checks from the client to the server
ESPHome
ESPHome ships on a calendar, and the August beta train is now five builds deep
Strimzi
Strimzi's 1.2.0 candidate closes with a logging fix and nothing else
Prowler
Prowler's assistant decides what to do with findings; the patches keep the scanner honest
NetBox
NetBox adds a cooling data model — the first new infrastructure domain since power
Recent activity from Depot and q2
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoq2Light/dark themes with a color-mode toggle; panel-tabset support
- 4d agoq2llms.txt site output and a live-share collaborative preview ⚡
- 5d agoq2TOC entries carry inline markup; draft banner restored
- 6d agoq2Adds alias redirect stubs and diagnostic suppression
- 6d agoq2Bumps samod and automerge; fixes indented continuations
- 7d agoq2Lua filters supported; mermaid bundled instead of CDN-loaded
- 9d agoDepotmacOS 26 is now the default macOS version for GitHub Actions runners
- 16d agoDepotDepot CI now supports native GitHub stacked pull requests
- 19d agoDepotSet cache retention when creating a project with --cache-policy-keep-days
- 20d agoDepotView and edit project details from the Depot CLI
- 21d agoDepotTest results are now generally available ⚡
- 29d agoDepotAI analysis available for all Depot CI workflows and jobs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Depot and q2?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Depot and q2 are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Depot better than q2?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Depot and q2 are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 6.3 vs 6.3, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Depot?
Top Depot alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Depot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/depot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to q2?
Top q2 alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "q2 alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/q2 for the full list with editorial commentary on each.