Glossary

Key terms and concepts used throughout the Azure Developer CLI codebase.

Core Concepts

azd (Azure Developer CLI)

A Go-based CLI tool for Azure application development and deployment. Handles infrastructure provisioning, application deployment, environment management, and service lifecycle hooks.

azure.yaml

The project configuration file that defines an azd project. Located at the root of a project, it declares services, their language/framework, hosting targets, and hooks. See azure.yaml Schema.

Environment

A named collection of configuration values and secrets stored locally (and optionally in a remote backend). Environments let you target different deployment configurations (e.g., dev, staging, prod) from the same project.

Service

A deployable unit defined in azure.yaml. Each service has a source path, a language/framework, and a host target. Services are built, packaged, and deployed independently during azd deploy.

Service Target (Host)

The Azure resource that hosts a deployed service. Supported targets include Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, Azure Functions, Azure Static Web Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Azure AI.

Framework Service

A language/build framework that knows how to restore, build, and package a service's source code. Built-in frameworks include .NET, Python, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Docker. Extensions can add support for additional frameworks.

Infrastructure

Bicep

The default Infrastructure as Code (IaC) language for azd. Bicep templates declare Azure resources and are compiled to ARM templates before deployment.

Terraform

An alternative IaC provider supported by azd. Terraform configurations use HCL syntax to declare Azure resources.

Provisioning

The process of creating or updating Azure infrastructure from IaC templates. Triggered by azd provision or as part of azd up.

Provision State

A hash-based mechanism that tracks whether the IaC template has changed since the last deployment. Provisioning is skipped when the template hash matches the previous deployment, unless --no-state is passed.

Provision Validation

Client-side (local) validation that runs after Bicep compilation but before deployment. Disabled with azd config set validation.provision off. Validates role assignment permissions, AI model quotas, and reserved resource names to surface issues early.

Extensions

Extension

A plugin that extends azd functionality via a gRPC-based framework. Extensions can add new commands, service targets, framework providers, event handlers, and more. First-party extensions live in cli/azd/extensions/.

Extension Registry

A JSON manifest that lists available extensions, their versions, capabilities, and download URLs. The official registry is hosted at https://aka.ms/azd/extensions/registry.

Extension Capabilities

The set of features an extension provides. Valid capabilities are: custom-commands, lifecycle-events, mcp-server, service-target-provider, framework-service-provider, provisioning-provider, and metadata. See Extension Framework for details.

Provisioning Provider

An extension capability that lets an extension provide a custom infrastructure provisioning experience as an alternative to built-in providers such as Bicep and Terraform.

Architecture

ActionDescriptor

The pattern used to define CLI commands. Each command is described by an ActionDescriptor that specifies its metadata, flags, output formats, and the action implementation to resolve via IoC.

Action

The interface that command implementations satisfy. Actions have a Run(ctx context.Context) (*ActionResult, error) method that executes the command logic.

IoC Container

The dependency injection container (pkg/ioc) used throughout azd. All services are registered at startup in cmd/container.go and resolved via the container at runtime.

Middleware

Cross-cutting concerns that wrap command execution. Middleware handles telemetry, hooks, extensions, and other concerns that apply across multiple commands.

Hooks

User-defined scripts that run at specific lifecycle points (pre/post provision, pre/post deploy, etc.). Hooks are declared in azure.yaml and executed by the middleware pipeline.

Feature Lifecycle

Alpha Feature

An experimental feature behind a feature flag. Enabled via azd config set alpha.<name> on or AZD_ALPHA_ENABLE_<name>=true. No stability guarantees.

Beta Feature

A feature that is functional and supported but may undergo breaking changes. Beta features are available by default without feature flags.

Stable Feature

A fully supported feature with backward compatibility guarantees and complete documentation.

Development

Snapshot Testing

A testing approach where command help output is captured and compared against saved snapshots. Updated via UPDATE_SNAPSHOTS=true go test ./cmd -run 'TestFigSpec|TestUsage'.

Fig Spec

A shell completion specification generated from the CLI command tree. Used to provide rich tab-completion in terminals that support Fig/autocomplete.