| title | description | author | ms.author | ms.date | ms.service | ms.topic | ms.custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
What is the Azure Developer CLI (preview)? |
Overview of the features and capabilities of the Azure Developer CLI that helps developers be more productive when building and deploying apps to Azure. |
alexwolfmsft |
alexwolf |
10/21/2022 |
azure-dev-cli |
conceptual |
devx-track-azdevcli |
Azure Developer CLI (azd) is an open-source tool that accelerates the process of building cloud apps on Azure. The CLI provides best practice, developer-friendly commands that map to key stages in your workflow, whether you’re working in the terminal, your editor or integrated development environment (IDE), or DevOps.
You can use the azd with extensible azd templates that include everything you need to get an application up and running in Azure. These templates include application code, and reusable infrastructure as code assets.
The new azd builds upon the experience and foundations of the Azure CLI. You can use both tools together, as needed, to support your Azure workflow.
Once you've installed Azure Developer CLI, the following steps are the typical workflow to using azd:
:::image type="content" source="media/overview/workflow.png" alt-text="Diagram of the Azure Developer CLI workflow.":::
- Select an Azure Developer CLI template.
- Get the code and deploy the template by running
azd up. - Customize the app to meet your needs.
The Azure Developer CLI works alongside idiomatic application templates that include the scaffolding for monitoring and CI/CD for your application. We provide azd templates in four supported languages. Each template uses best practices and includes:
- Application code
- Infra-as-code files (Bicep or Terraform) needed to provision the Azure resources
- An
azure.yamlfile that describes your application.
Learn more about the azd templates we provide and which template you should select.
Azure Developer CLI (azd) and Azure CLI are both command-line tools.
However, they help you do different tasks.
The azd focuses on the developer workflow. Apart from provisioning/managing Azure resources, the CLI helps to stitch cloud components, local development configuration, and pipeline automation together into a complete solution.
Azure CLI is a control plane tool for creating and administering Azure infrastructure such as virtual machines, virtual networks, and storage.
You can run any azd template, in one of the following supported development environments:
| Environment | Description | Pros | Cons | Supported? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bare Metal | Not in a container, dependencies are manually installed by you, and the project is run on your local machine. | You control all dependencies. You may already have some of the dependencies installed. You don't need Docker installed. | You have to manually install all dependencies. | Yes |
| DevContainer / VS Code Remote - Containers | Container with all dependencies installed and run on your local machine. | Other than VS Code, Docker, and the Remote Containers VS Code extension, all dependencies are installed for you in the DevContainer. | You need to clone the repository. The container initialization can take a long time. | Yes |
| GitHub Codespaces | Container with all dependencies installed and running on GitHub.com in the browser. | All dependencies are installed without cloning the code locally. | Run and debug that requires launching a web browser is currently not supported because of known limitation with GitHub Codespaces. | Yes |
Currently supported/planned hosting platform for the app:
| Azure compute service | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Azure App Service | Yes |
| Function | Yes |
| Azure Container Apps | Yes |
| Azure Static Web Apps | Yes |
| Azure Kubernetes Service | Coming soon |
Currently supported/planned languages:
| Language | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Node.js | Yes |
| Python | Yes |
| .NET | Yes |
| Java | Yes |
- Get started by installing Azure Developer CLI.
- Walk through our quickstart to see Azure Developer CLI in action.