My vision of Aspire

[g-martin772]

I don't know if there is an official roadmap for Aspire or something like that.
So I thought I might share my point of view on features that I would love to see:

• Hot Reloading -> What I do now to make this work is adding all projects as executable resources that call dotnet watch because restarting the entire stack every time you make a change is extremely slow. I suspect that the AddProject API just calls dotnet run in one way or another under the hood (but I haven't looked into it) so I thought the option to add a flag for whether you want to use run/watch might be a good idea.
• I know there are also other issues open regarding support for Restarting apps from the dashboard, but I still wanted to add it here. Being able to start/stop/restart specific services directly from the dashboard seems like the way to go for me
• Support for entity framework is there, but I think expanding on this might be a good idea since it is one of .NET's core features. Especially adding support for "hot swapping" databases. Basically being able to change the dataset/database or any container resource in general while the app continues to run. I know this might not be so easy to implement but it would certainly be cool.
• Another thing I wanted to mention is the way of dealing with credentials for containers like the SQL server password. I don't know if there is a "correct" way to do this yet. Like being able to easily use local secret storage and also make it work well with deployment and CI/CD like Github Actions.
• An integrated way to manage and apply migrations. The current version of having a separate "DbManager" Project that applies the migrations works fine but setting this up for every db feels a bit tedious.
• I know support for various Azure things is still work in progress and I hope this turns out great. Making any newbie like me able to deploy their distributed applications to Azure with basically one click would be amazing.
• Managing container volumes from the Dashboard
• Maybe adding a way to visually represent how all the services are connected and all the pieces Aspire creates automatically to connect them and make everything work
• Maybe grouping resources together and having different "types" of run configurations like a "slim" version for local UI development that just connects a Blazor app to some dummy data and a "full" version that runs the real database and API and caching and all the other stuff. Since these distributed apps can get quite big quite quickly this would be amazing for local development because not everyone has a beefy workstation at hand (for example when working on a laptop)
• Local SMTP Mail Server Component

Other than that I think this is an amazing project! I have only been using it for a few weeks now so I am far from an expert. I hope my feedback is well placed in this Discussion forum. Any thoughts on that?

[davidfowl]

Hot Reloading -> What I do now to make this work is adding all projects as executable resources that call dotnet watch because restarting the entire stack every time you make a change is extremely slow. I suspect that the AddProject API just calls dotnet run in one way or another under the hood (but I haven't looked into it) so I thought the option to add a flag for whether you want to use run/watch might be a good idea.

Still, lots of work to do here but normal hot reload works when you use F5. If you are using the command line then you can use dotnet watch on the apphost project. The 3rd pattern that we support from visual studio is using CTRL + F5 which enables launching without debugging while being able to change and rebuild individual projects without tearing everything down. This has been a constant source of feedback and we're still iterating on what the best incremental flow might be. We're also looking at future patterns where the IDE can keep around more state so that we can tear down less things (like the dashboard for e.g.).

I know there are also other issues open regarding support for Restarting apps from the dashboard, but I still wanted to add it here. Being able to start/stop/restart specific services directly from the dashboard seems like the way to go for me

Definitely on the roadmap.

Support for entity framework is there, but I think expanding on this might be a good idea since it is one of .NET's core features. Especially adding support for "hot swapping" databases. Basically being able to change the dataset/database or any container resource in general while the app continues to run. I know this might not be so easy to implement but it would certainly be cool.

cc @roji

Another thing I wanted to mention is the way of dealing with credentials for containers like the SQL server password. I don't know if there is a "correct" way to do this yet. Like being able to easily use local secret storage and also make it work well with deployment and CI/CD like Github Actions.

Depends on what you mean by this. If you're going to azure and using azd, then we have an out of the box solution for you. Otherwise, you fallback to providing values as part of your environment like you normally do in these scenarios.

An integrated way to manage and apply migrations. The current version of having a separate "DbManager" Project that applies the migrations works fine but setting this up for every db feels a bit tedious.

Agree, for local development the overhead of building a standalone app is high. Though this method also works for deployment scenarios it feels a bit much when getting started.

Managing container volumes from the Dashboard

Yes these should be visible for sure. Filed #3969

Maybe adding a way to visually represent how all the services are connected and all the pieces Aspire creates automatically to connect them and make everything work

On the roadmap.

Maybe grouping resources together and having different "types" of run configurations like a "slim" version for local UI development that just connects a Blazor app to some dummy data and a "full" version that runs the real database and API and caching and all the other stuff. Since these distributed apps can get quite big quite quickly this would be amazing for local development because not everyone has a beefy workstation at hand (for example when working on a laptop)

Also on the roadmap.

Local SMTP Mail Server Component

You don't have to wait for us to build resources and components but this is a good suggestion! @mitchdenny is working on documentation that shows how to build this dotnet/docs-aspire#755

Keep the feedback coming!

[g-martin772]

You don't have to wait for us to build resources and components but this is a good suggestion! @mitchdenny is working on documentation that shows how to build this dotnet/docs-aspire#755

Thanks for the tipp! I have already built a few wrappers for the containers I use and it works great.

[g-martin772]

Regarding the database integration stuff with ef, I have a few more ideas.

Maybe we could have something like the DbManager Project built directly into the Dashboard. Where for each db you add in the AppHost you can optionally specify a Migrations Project to use for the db that then shows up in the dashboard. It would also be cool to have a SQL console where you can run SQL queries directly from the dashboard. For local development, you also usually have some seed data. Would be cool if we could set/reset the data with just a single click and confirm. I think the example also shows a CreateStablePassword method to create a password for the SQL container, but when using a Data Volume, it expects the same password when launching it for the second time so it just crashes if a new random pw is provided (I am not sure if this is what's supposed to happen but it does). Maybe having a built-in system that watches the volume state and just stores the pw somewhere as long as the volume exists, and when creating a new one also creates a new pw or something like that to improve the experience and have one thing less to think about.

[g-martin772]

Since the ability to restart resources from the dashboard is planned to be added, a system that detects what services are connected in what way, so that dependent services get restarted too, will probably be implemented anyway.

[roji]

Maybe; if that's the case, there doesn't seem to be anything specifically related to database here though - it would be a purely container chained restart feature, nothing more.

[davidfowl]

@roji I think an interactive database migration UI for EF would be a useful interactive tool we could make part of the core aspire experience. It would be the equivalent of using the command line ef tool.

[roji]

Sure, we could definitely think about something like that... We'd ideally make it an independent UI component that would then be integratable in the Aspire dashboard?

[davidfowl]

Yep that’s the thought.