What is the Azure Developer CLI?

  • 6 minutes

The Azure Developer CLI (azd) is an open-source command-line tool that reduces the time it takes for you to get your application from a local development environment to Azure. azd provides best practice, developer-friendly commands that map to key stages in your workflow, whether you're working in the terminal, your preferred local development environment (for example, editor or integrated development environment (IDE)), or CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) pipelines.

You can install azd locally on your machine or use it in other environments such as GitHub Codespaces. Visit the install page for a full list of supported installation methods and environments. For example, to install azd locally on Windows or Mac, you could use one of the following commands:

winget install microsoft.azd

The Azure Developer CLI relies on extensible templates that include everything you need to get an application up and running on Azure. These templates include reusable infrastructure as code (IaC) assets written in Bicep or Terraform and proof-of-concept application code that can be replaced with your own app code. You can search for an existing template that uses a similar technology stack to your local app as a starting point. Many of the available templates are listed in the awesome-azd template library. The combination of azd commands and templates allows you to streamline many common development workflow stages and tasks:

  • Build and package application code - azd autodetects the language or framework of your application and builds and packages the code for deployment.

  • Provision resources on Azure - azd can create the Azure services and resources your application needs to run in the cloud in a repeatable, automated way. Reusable azd templates ensure that the same resources and configurations are created the same way for everyone who uses the project.

  • Deploy resources to Azure - azd also deploys your packaged application code to the resources that were provisioned in Azure. Via an azure.yaml file, azd templates support projects that contain multiple apps/services in a single codebase and handles deploying the correct code to the correct Azure resources.

  • Monitor resources - You can also monitor your deployed resources using azd and Azure Application Insights services. This feature lets you use live metrics, logs, and other data to analyze the status of your app.

  • Remove resources - azd can also tear down all of the Azure resources that were deployed to host your app, ensuring a reliable cleanup process to avoid unwanted costs.