Maddy Montaquila introduces the Aspire 9.4 release, showcasing new CLI capabilities, interactive dashboard features, and first-class AI service integrations. Discover what’s new for developing modern .NET distributed and AI-enabled applications with enhanced productivity.

Aspire 9.4 Release Overview

Today, .NET Aspire 9.4 is released, described as the biggest release so far for the platform. It introduces a suite of new features including a general-availability (GA) command-line interface (CLI), interactive dashboard elements, and integrations for AI-based workflows. The release comes alongside the publication of Aspire’s first roadmap, outlining upcoming enhancements.

Key Highlights

  • Aspire CLI (GA):
    • Provides a fast, scriptable, and consistent interface for scaffolding, running, and configuring apps.
    • Core commands:
      • aspire new: Select templates to start new projects.
      • aspire add: Add Aspire hosting integrations from anywhere in a repo.
      • aspire run: Run the entire application stack from any terminal or editor.
      • aspire config: Manage CLI configurations and feature flags at local or global scope.
    • Updated aspire publish (preview) and beta commands exec (run CLI tools) and deploy (deploy full stack).
    • Native AOT-compiled for performance.
    • Can be installed via Bash or PowerShell scripts:
      • Bash: curl -sSL https://aspire.dev/install.sh | bash
      • PowerShell: iex "& { $(irm https://aspire.dev/install.ps1) }"
  • Interactive Dashboard Features:
    • New eventing APIs and an extensibility point via the Interaction Service.
    • Custom UX allows obtaining user input during app runtime, presenting notifications, and confirmations.
    • Supports input types: Text, SecretText (masked), Number, Choice (dropdown), Boolean (checkbox).
    • Interaction service supports both dashboard and CLI inputs (e.g., during publish and deploy).
    • Feature is in preview with ongoing refinement based on community feedback.
  • Built-in Prompting for Parameters:
    • Automatically collects missing parameter values through dashboard prompts.
    • Reduces the need for per-developer config files.
    • Supports rich markdown in prompts and user secrets for secure storage.

AI and Cloud-Native Integrations

  • Easy AI Development:
    • Aspire 9.4 introduces integrations for:
    • Define AI models in the apphost and run or deploy models directly for development and debugging.
    • Seamless setup with Azure AI Inference (Preview).

    • Example code to define and deploy an AI model:

      // AppHost.cs
var ai = builder.AddAzureAIFoundry("ai");
var embedding = ai.AddDeployment(
    name: "text-embedding",
    modelName: "text-embedding-3-small",
    modelVersion: "1",
    format: "OpenAI")
    .WithProperties(d => { d.SkuCapacity = 20; });
  • External Service and YARP Integration:

    • The new AddExternalService() API models any URL or endpoint as a first-class resource, allowing health monitoring, configuration, and orchestration like internal services.

      var externalApi = builder.AddExternalService("resource-name", "https://api.example.com");
var frontend = builder.AddNpmApp("frontend", "../MyJSCodeDirectory")
    .WithReference(externalApi);

    • YARP (Yet Another Reverse Proxy) integration enhanced with fluent APIs to manage configuration programmatically in C#.

Getting Started with Aspire 9.4

  • Review the complete feature list in the What’s New documentation.

  • Upgrade by updating your AppHost.csproj SDK and NuGet package references:

    <!-- SDK version -->
<Sdk Name="Aspire.AppHost.Sdk" Version="9.4.0" />

<!-- NuGet package references -->
<PackageReference Include="Aspire.Hosting.AppHost" Version="9.4.0" />
  • Community contributors helped drive updates and feedback is welcomed via the Aspire GitHub and Discord server.

This article includes AI-assisted content and was reviewed and revised by the author. For more details, refer to the principles for AI-generated content.

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