Generate custom target

[alefranz]

Is there documentation on how to generate a custom target? I'm not sure what is the correct term in Aspire, but essentially being able for example to generate some custom YAML or API calls to then provision the resources to a new target destination that is not one of the currently supported ones.

Is the recommended approach to parse the manifest.json generated by Aspire or would it require some more tight integration with the internal models?

I see for example is you add items to Tags in ConfigureInfrastructure, the tags are not included in the manifest.json

Thanks!

[davidfowl]

Sounds like a custom resource?

This is a conceptual doc and guide I've been developing:

https://gist.github.com/davidfowl/b408af870d4b5b54a28bf18bffa127e1

[alefranz]

Thanks David, nice document! I’ll go through it properly. From a quick skim, I think what I’m after is either a manifest publisher or a deployment tool?

Let me try to explain with an example.

Let’s say I currently have an IaC solution, where the infrastructure configuration is defined in a file I'll call infra-config. This config provisions infrastructure on Azure. I now want to retrofit Aspire support into it — but without migrating to Bicep.

So, before:

graph TD
  A[infra-config] -- provision --> B[Azure]

Loading

After:

graph TD
  A[Aspire Host] -- publish --> B[aspire-manifest.json]
  B -- deployment tool ?? --> C[infra-config]
  C -- provision --> D[Azure]

Loading

What is the role of this deployment tool exactly? And is using the manifest as an intermediate step the recommended approach?

Is there any documentation on how to build this kind of tool, or is my best bet to take inspiration from the aspirational-manifests repo?

[davidfowl]

I think you want 2 things:

1. Custom resources (this is how azure resources are built today with bicep). You need something in the app model to describe how your infra config is modeled.
2. A publisher (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/aspire/whats-new/dotnet-aspire-9.2#-deployment-improvements)

This is still evolving but those are the ingredients.

[davidfowl]

Going forward its likely we'll push this into the resource itself #9089