Visual Studio: use configuration other then develop

[h3yduck]

Hi!

Is it possible to choose AZDS configuration when running from Visual Studio? There isn't a dropdown for this on the UI and specifying commandLineArgs in launchSettings.json is ignored by AZDS.

Thanks in advance!

[h3yduck]

I've also tried devSpacesConfigName and alike in launchSettings.json, none of them work. I would also be happy with setting an environment variable like MS_VS_AZUREDEVSPACES_TOOLS_LOGGING_ENABLED for logging but couldn't find a documentation for this anywhere.

[amsoedal]

Hi @h3yduck ,

1. Are you trying to pass command line arguments to your own application, or to the AZDS process? If you want to configure how your application is run, have you seen if editing the azds.yaml file in your project directory can give you what you need?
2. For logging, if you want to see logs from Dev Spaces, you need to have a line in your ~/.azure/config file like this under the [logging] section:

[logging]
enable_log_file = yes

(You can also accomplish the same thing with the AZURE_LOGGING_ENABLE_LOG_FILE environment variable.) After enabling this, you should see logs in these directories, depending on your OS:
For Windows: %TEMP%/Azure Dev Spaces
For OSX/Linux: $TMPDIR/Azure Dev Spaces

Let us know if this helps!

[h3yduck]

Hi @amsoedal ,

Thank you very much for the quick response!
Logging is working fine, I have problems with specifying a development configuration for AZDS. Let me bring you up to speed on what I'm trying to achieve:

We run our services on multiple environments, let's call them A and B.
I created development configurations for both of them in azds.yaml:

configurations:
  A:
    install:
      set:
        vault: vault-of-env-A
        # some other value overrides...
  A:
    install:
      set:
        vault: vault-of-env-A
        # some other value overrides...

Running azds up --config A and azds up --config B from the CLI works fine: it's overriding the desired values specific to A or B environment.

I would like to do the same but inside Visual Studio. It defaults to a development configuration called develop and I couldn't find a way to use anything other than that. Is there a way (setting an environment variable/field in launchSettings.json/some setting in Visual Studio/etc.)?

[danegsta]

Hey @h3yduck,

There's currently some basic functionality in the VS extension to support changing the deployment configuration we use when deploying to Dev Spaces. You can edit the .csproj file for the DevSpaces project to add an MSBuild Property for DevSpacesConfiguration that sets the configuration name to use.

For example:

<PropertyGroup>
  <DevSpacesConfiguration>A</DevSpacesConfiguration>
</PropertyGroup>

That's definitely not as straightforward or flexible as the config flag from the CLI though. I'll add a work item to our backlog to support specifying a custom config name in the launch profile.