Deploying aspire blazor app, how to use build package from a previous stage in Azure Devops

[mip1983]

I've an Azure DevOps pipeline which was based on the yaml template from aspire, but I've evolved to do a bit more, broken into stages, running tests, approvals and deployments to different environments.

The steps where I run 'azd deploy' take quite a while (because it's a Blazor app with AOT, so takes some crunching to produce publish output), and because it's going to different environments at different build stages, this long build runs multiple times.

As such, I've been trying to create a build/publish step up front with the output of that available to subsequent steps, hoping to prevent azd needing to create the publish output each time. However, the docs seems a bit sparse on this from what I've found, so am struggling.

Here's an example of the deploy step I'm trying at the moment:

- task: AzureCLI@2
      displayName: 'Deploy API application to staging'
      condition: and(succeeded(), ${{ eq(parameters.releaseStaging, true) }})
      inputs:
        azureSubscription: 'azureDevServiceConnection'
        scriptType: 'pscore'
        scriptLocation: 'inlineScript'
        inlineScript: 'azd deploy web'
        arguments: '--from-package $(Pipeline.Workspace)\drop\web.zip --no-prompt --debug'
        workingDirectory: '<codecheckoutfolderhere>'
      env:
        AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID: $(AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID)
        AZURE_ENV_NAME: $(AZURE_ENV_NAME)
        AZURE_LOCATION: $(AZURE_LOCATION)
        AZD_INITIAL_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG: $(AZD_INITIAL_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG)

However, it doesn't seem like '--from-package' does anything and it just starts 'Analyzing Aspire Application' and builds/publishes from source.

How do I go about doing this?

[rajeshkamal5050]

@weikanglim can you take a look?

[rajeshkamal5050]

@vhvb1989 is this because the azd package is a no-op for Aspire and hence deploy from package is not supported?

[vhvb1989]

Yes, deploy --from-package works only for a host like Azure Web App where deployment strategy is zip-deploy.

.NET Aspire uses Azure Container Apps where deployment is based on building a Container and pushing it to a Container Registry. However, azd is currently doing the full deployment (build container, push container and update Azure Container App) as part of azd deploy

There's currently not a way to break build+push container from updating ACA.

[weikanglim]

Agreed with @vhvb1989 's analysis. I would like to move this discussion into a feature request and created #4374 specifically for Aspire.

Also worth noting: the Aspire's packaging enhancement is one part of packaging related enhancements that we would want to deliver. I have some local drafts on scenarios we'd want to cover, but will need to take some time to write them out soon.