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Welcome to the Hitchhiker's Guide to azd compose!

What is azd compose?

azd Compose is designed for developers who are new to Azure and want to progressively build and deploy applications to the cloud.

Developers can choose to:

1. Use easy-init to scan their application code project information, and analyze package dependencies as a heauristic for identifying relevant database clients. Auto-dectection is limited by design given the complexity in detecting and mapping Azure resources to app components. In the 1st iteration, we focus on deploying app to Azure Container App (ACA).
2. Directly start building an app by easy-initing an empty folder.

In either workflow, developers can run azd add to progressively add components one by one. Note that for Northstar, developers expect to be able to start from any azd template; use it as a building block; and run azd add to create their own azd template that matches their applicaiton stack.

Bicep is generated in memory. Developers can run azd infra sync to get all Bicep code if they want to.

Guiding principles

When adding support for new Azure service, we adhere to the following principles:

1. Secured by desige: we support managed identity (keyless access) whenever possible.
2. Keep it simple: we prioritize the simplest getting started experience for the Azure service
3. Guided but familiar: guided path always follows the same pattern established by existing supported Azure services.
4. Not management plane: azd (compose) is not meant for managing Azure resources. Customers should use az instead.
5. Opinionated but informative: we are opinionated but always provide guidance/links to help customers.