Stop Writing Git Commits: How AI-Powered GitKraken CLI Accelerates Your Development

As developers, we're constantly looking for tools that can help us stay in the flow and be more productive. Today, I want to share a powerful tool that's been gaining traction in the developer community: GitKraken CLI. This command-line interface brings together several key features that modern developers love - it's AI-powered, terminal-based, and incredibly efficient for managing Git workflows.

(Version française ici)

What Makes GitKraken CLI Special?

GitKraken CLI (accessible via the gk command) stands out because it simplifies complex Git workflows while adding intelligent automation. Unlike traditional Git commands, it provides a more intuitive workflow management system that can handle multiple repositories simultaneously.

Getting Started

Installation is straightforward. On Windows, you can install it using:

winget install gitkraken.cli

Once installed, you'll have access to the gk command, which becomes your gateway to streamlined Git operations.

The Workflow in Action

Let's walk through a typical development session using GitKraken CLI:

1. Starting a Work Session

Instead of manually creating branches and switching contexts, you can start a focused work session:

gk w start "Add Behind my Cloud feed" -i "Add Behind my Cloud feed #1"

This single command:

• Creates a new branch based on your issue/feature name
• Switches to that branch automatically
• Links the work session to a specific issue
• Sets up your development environment for focused work

2. Managing Multiple Work Sessions

You can easily see all your active work sessions:

gk w list

This is particularly powerful when working across multiple repositories or juggling several features simultaneously.

3. Committing with Intelligence

After making your changes, adding files works as expected:

gk add .

But here's where the AI magic happens. Instead of writing commit messages manually:

gk w commit --ai

The AI analyzes your changes and generates meaningful, descriptive commit messages automatically. No more "quick fix" or "update stuff" commits!

4. Pushing and Creating Pull Requests

Publishing your work is equally streamlined:

gk w push

And when you're ready to create a pull request:

gk w pr create --ai

Again, AI assistance helps generate appropriate PR titles and descriptions based on your work.

5. Wrapping Up

Once your work is complete and merged, clean up is simple:

gk w end

This command:

• Switches you back to the main branch
• Deletes the feature branch, locally and on GitHub
• Closes the work session
• Leaves your repository clean and ready for the next task

Why This Matters

The beauty of GitKraken CLI lies in its ability to keep you in the zone. You don't need to:

• Switch between multiple tools
• Remember complex Git commands
• Write commit messages from scratch
• Manually manage branch lifecycle

Everything flows naturally from one command to the next, maintaining your focus on what matters most: writing code.

Multi-Repository Power

One of the standout features is GitKraken CLI's ability to manage multiple repositories simultaneously. This is invaluable for:

• Microservices architectures
• Full-stack applications with separate frontend/backend repos
• Organizations with multiple related projects

Try It Yourself

GitKraken CLI is part of a broader suite of developer tools that GitKraken offers. The CLI itself is free to use, which makes it easy to experiment with and integrate into your workflow without any upfront commitment. If you find value in the CLI and want to explore their other tools, GitKraken has various products that might complement your development setup.

The learning curve is genuinely minimal since it builds on Git concepts you already know while adding helpful automation. I've found that even small workflow improvements can compound over time, especially when you're working on multiple projects or dealing with frequent context switching.

If you're curious about what else GitKraken offers beyond the CLI, you can explore their full product lineup here. For those who decide the Pro features would benefit their workflow, as an ambassador of GitKraken I can share my code to provide a 50% discount for your GitKraken Pro subscription.

The combination of AI assistance and intuitive commands addresses real pain points that many developers face daily. Whether GitKraken CLI becomes a core part of your toolkit will depend on your specific workflow, but it's worth trying given that it's free and takes just a few minutes to set up.

---

The best tools are the ones that get out of your way and let you focus on building. GitKraken CLI aims to do exactly that.

Reading Notes #650

It's time for another edition of Reading Notes! This week brings exciting developments in the open source world, with major announcements from Microsoft making WSL and VS Code's AI features open source. We've also got updates on Azure Container Apps, .NET Aspire, and some great insights on developer productivity tools.

 

Let's dive into these interesting reads that caught my attention this week.

Cloud

• Happy 5th Birthday Bicep! (Sam Cogan) - What?! Five years already! That's incredible, I remember all the discussion about how we make our business better and honestly, bicep is a big success. Congrats to the team

• Have I Been Pwned 2.0 is Now Live! (Troy Hunt) - New look, new merch, and confetti, all without API breaking changes! Learn all about this major update in this post.

• Announcing Workflow in Azure Container Apps with the Durable task scheduler – Now in Preview! (greenie) - Exciting news about a new service. It looks solid and perfect for integration scenarios. Looking forward to experimenting with it.

Programming

• Pushing a whole stack of branches with a single Git command (Andrew Lock) - I'm always amazed to learn how people use git. This post shares a very smart way to push clear feature in multiple branches

• What's new in .NET Aspire 9.3 (David Pine) - Wow! How so many great new features can be added in a single version?! Aspire is a must for all .NET developers.

• Accelerate Your .NET Upgrades with GitHub Copilot (McKenna Barlow) - That's the tool I've been waiting for ages! Adding a Copilot to the extension is the smartest move they could make. I'm going to update an app right away. I'll share more later

Open Source

• Edit is now open source (Christopher Nguyen) - That's a great news! I installed it half through the post and it great! Fast, simple, and tiny!! Love it!

• The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source (Pierre Boulay) - And another project that turns out to be open source, I love it, it's just fantasti,c read all the details and dispose

• VS Code: Open Source AI Editor (VS Code team) - I strongly believe in open source. Very happy to see this change!

AI

• Agent mode for every developer (Katie Savage) - Great new for everyone as the agent mode become available in so many different editor. This post also contains videos to shows some scenarios.

Podcasts

• Reimagining the Windows Terminal with Warp's Zach Lloyd (Scott Hanselman) - A very interesting talk with the CEO of Warp that answers so many questions I had about this very different terminal. Really interesting episode, and terminal too BTW)

• The power of empathy in leadership with Jerry Colonna (Macmillan Holdings, LLC) - This very interesting episode is about the power of empathy in leadership.

• 362. Maximal Fitness with Minimum Time with Ben Greenfield (Part 1) (Greg McKeown) - Interesting conversation with a triathlete about different ways to train and nutrition

Miscellaneous

• The experience is enough (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Whether we like it or not, we are people creature. We all need to stop hiding behind our screens and get out there!

~frank

Full-Stack Azure Deployment Made Easy: Containers, Databases, and More

Automating deployments is something I always enjoy. However, it's true that it often takes more time than a simple "right-click deploy." Plus, you may need to know different technologies and scripting languages.

(Version française ici)

But what if there was a tool that could help you write everything you need—Infrastructure as Code (IaC) files, scripts to copy files, and scripts to populate a database? In this post, we'll explore how the Azure Developer CLI (azd) can make deployments much easier.

What do we want to do?

Our goal: Deploy the 2D6 Dungeon App to Azure Container Apps.

This .NET Aspire solution includes:

• A frontend
• A data API
• A database

The Problem

In a previous post, we showed how azd up can easily deploy web apps to Azure.

If we try the same command for this solution, the deployment will be successful—but incomplete:

• The .NET Blazor frontend is deployed perfectly.
• However, the app fails when trying to access data.
• Looking at the logs, we see the database wasn't created or populated, and the API container fails to start.

Let's look more closely at these issues.

The Database

When running the solution locally, Aspire creates a MySQL container and executes SQL scripts to create and populate the tables. This is specified in the AppHost project:

var mysql = builder.AddMySql("sqlsvr2d6")
                   .WithLifetime(ContainerLifetime.Persistent);
                
var db2d6 = mysql.AddDatabase("db2d6");

mysql.WithInitBindMount(source: "../../database/scripts", isReadOnly: false);

When MySQL starts, it looks for SQL files in a specific folder and executes them. Locally, this works because the bind mount is mapped to a local folder with the files.

However, when deployed to Azure:

• The mounts are created in Azure Storage Files
• The files are missing!

The Data API

This project uses Data API Builder (dab). Based on a single config file, a full data API is built and hosted in a container.

Locally, Aspire creates a DAB container and reads the JSON config file to create the API. This is specified in the AppHost project:

var dab = builder.AddDataAPIBuilder("dab", ["../../database/dab-config.json"])
                .WithReference(db2d6)
                .WaitFor(db2d6);

But once again, when deployed to Azure, the file is missing. The DAB container starts but fails to find the config file.

The Solution

The solution is simple: the SQL scripts and DAB config file need to be uploaded into Azure Storage Files during deployment.

You can do this by adding a post-provision hook in the azure.yaml file to execute a script that uploads the files. See an example of a post-provision hook in this post.

Alternatively, you can leverage azd alpha features: azd.operations and infraSynth.

• azd.operations extends the provisioning providers and will upload the files for us.
• infraSynth generates the IaC files for the entire solution.

💡Note: These features are in alpha and subject to change.

Each azd alpha feature can be turned on individually. To see all features:

azd config list-alpha

To activate the features we need:

azd config set alpha.azd.operations on
azd config set alpha.infraSynth on

Let's Try It

Once the azd.operation feature is activated, any azd up will now upload the files into Azure. If you check the database, you'll see that the db2d6 database was created and populated. Yay!

However, the DAB API will still fail to start. Why? Because, currently, DAB looks for a file, not a folder, when it starts. This can be fixed by modifying the IaC files.

One Last Step: Synthesize the IaC Files

First, let's synthesize the IaC files. These Bicep files describe the required infrastructure for our solution.

With the infraSynth feature activated, run:

azd infra synth

You'll now see a new infra folder under the AppHost project, with YAML files matching the container names. Each file contains the details for creating a container.

Open the dab.tmpl.yaml file to see the DAB API configuration. Look for the volumeMounts section. To help DAB find its config file, add subPath: dab-config.json to make the binding more specific:

containers:
    - image: {{ .Image }}
      name: dab
      env:
        - name: AZURE_CLIENT_ID
          value: {{ .Env.MANAGED_IDENTITY_CLIENT_ID }}
        - name: ConnectionStrings__db2d6
          secretRef: connectionstrings--db2d6
      volumeMounts:
        - volumeName: dab-bm0
          mountPath: /App/dab-config.json
          subPath: dab-config.json
scale:
    minReplicas: 1
    maxReplicas: 1

You can also specify the scaling minimum and maximum number of replicas if you wish.

Now that the IaC files are created, azd will use them. If you run azd up again, the execution time will be much faster—azd deployment is incremental and only does "what changed."

The Final Result

The solution is now fully deployed:

• The database is there with the data
• The API works as expected
• You can use your application!

Bonus: Deploying with CI/CD

Want to deploy with CI/CD? First, generate the GitHub Action (or Azure DevOps) workflow with:

azd pipeline config

Then, add a step to activate the alpha feature before the provisioning step in the azure-dev.yml file generated by the previous command.

- name: Extends provisioning providers with azd operations
  run: azd config set alpha.azd.operations on     

With these changes, and assuming the infra files are included in the repo, the deployment will work on the first try.

Conclusion

It's exciting to see how tools like azd are shaping the future of development and deployment. Not only do they make the developer's life easier today by automating complex tasks, but they also ensure you're ready for production with all the necessary Infrastructure as Code (IaC) files in place. The journey from code to cloud has never been smoother!

If you have any questions or feedback, I'm always happy to help—just reach out on your favorite social media platform.

In Video

Here the video version of this blog post.

References

• 2D6 Dungeon App GitHub Repository
• Azure Developer CLI (azd)
• Data API Builder (dab)

Reading Notes #648

Welcome to this week's reading notes! Dive into the latest on Microsoft's new AI chat template, explore Docker's MCP CLI, learn about integrating AI into .NET applications, and discover how to automate .NET MAUI library publishing with GitHub Actions. 

Whether you're interested in AI advancements, programming techniques, or DevOps practices, there's something valuable waiting for you below.

MsDevMtl Meetup - Uno

Suggestion of the week

• Exploring the new AI chat template (Andrew Lock) - This new .NET template looks pretty useful and has a lot of components already baked in. This post explains those and shows how to customize it for our usage.

Programming

• Crates and Dependencies: NuGet, Meet Cargo - Chris Woody Woodruff (Chris Woodruff) - Interesting comparison there, a bit more love toward Rust, I think, but that doesn't make this series less valuable.

• How to Host Blazor WASM on Docker (Rikam Palkar) - Nice post with all the code you need to reproduce.

DevOps

• Packaging and Publishing a .NET MAUI Library with GitHub Actions - .NET Blog (Sweeky , David) - I'm always amazed by what we can do with automation. Second post of a series on .NET MAUI.

AI

• Getting Hands-On with the Docker MCP CLI (Sarthak Varshney) - How to get, use, and connect the brand new MCP tool from Docker.

• AI Repo of the Week: GitHub Copilot Adventures (Dan Wahlin) - When open-source meets AI, and this time, games! Interesting series where AI-related repositories are featured.

• Microsoft.Extensions.AI: Integrating AI into your .NET applications (Japhlet Nwamu) - This package is amazing. It allows you to connect to many models hosted in many different places. This post is the perfect place to get started.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #640

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you have interesting content, share it! 

Cloud

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) - March 2025 - The azd CLI just got better, with some new features, improved error messages, and of course bug fixes. Don't forget to update your version.

• Dapr in Two Minutes: Simplifying Distributed Application Development (Whitney Lee) - A great explanation of Dapr. Spoiler, it's a great tool.

AI

• .NET AI Template Now Available in Preview (Jordan Matthiesen) - .NET new AI stuff, I love it! You can add new templates for you 'dotnet new' to get AI project!

Programming

• .NET Aspire and Dev Container (Laurent Kempé) - DevContainers are really a game changer. You don't have to be a container guru to use it, and it will make a dev environment constant everywhere on any device.

• A 10x Faster TypeScript - TypeScript (Anders Hejlsberg) - Very impressive results. The video is great.

• .NET Aspirations - Embracing OpenTelemetry (Alexandre Nédélec) - This nice post explains how the open telemetry is set in .Net Aspire Dashboard.

~frank

Reading Notes #637

In this edition of my Reading Notes, I've curated some fascinating content that spans across programming, creativity, and enlightening podcasts. Whether you're eager to enhance your coding skills, explore unique ideas, or stay updated with the latest in the tech world, there's something here for everyone. 

Dive in and enjoy these insightful reads and discussions!

Programming

• New Features for Enhanced Razor Productivity! (Leslie Richardson) - I love the new component feature that's one that I will use over and over for sure.

• Abstract vs Interface: Deep dive (Serhii Korol) - You probably know the difference between those two just like me, but do you know how the code is interpreted that's very interesting.

• Riverdam - Feature Gates Finally Made Easy (David Guida) - A cool tool to ease development. This new project definitely looked interesting.

• 11 Must Read Software Design and Architecture Books for Developers (Soma) - I like books. It's a great way to go deeper about a topic at your own pace and when you want. This post has great recommendations, and I really enjoy the authenticity in the comments.

Podcasts

• Static Websites in 2025 with Stacy Cashmore (.NET Rocks!) - It was nice listening to the discussion with Stacy about how are Azure Static Websites are evolving.

Miscellaneous

• Typing tests were boring, so i built TypeTheLyrics. (Arjun Vijay Prakash) - Cool idea! It's true that music always has a big impact on everything.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. If you have interesting content, share it! 

 ~Frank

Reading Notes #635

This week Reading Notes, covers various topics in programming and databases. Discover the latest ASP.NET Core release, the importance of clear error messages, and coding with voice commands. Learn about new features in Azure EasyAuth and Microsoft Entra Authentication for Azure PostgreSQL. We also bid farewell to Azure Data Studio as it moves to VS Code extensions.

 
Let's get started!

Programming

• ASP.NET Core on .NET Framework servicing release advisory: ASP.NET Core 2.3 (Daniel Roth) - Learn more about this new release.

• The Importance of Good Error Messages (jdanton1) - I cannot agree more with the idea! How many of us have lost hours trying to figure out what was the error because the description wasn't clear!

• From pain to productivity: How I learned to code with my voice (Salma) - I watched a few of Salma's streams where she was struggling with those tools. This post shares the entire story, the different tools, and her progress.

• Giving Granular Controls to Azure EasyAuth | Microsoft Community Hub ( Justin Yoo) - EasyAuth is like the name suggests pretty simple to setup and use, but also more minimalist than other solutions. This OSS package changes everything making it more versatile.

Databases

• Microsoft Entra Authentication for Azure PostgreSQL (Arun S) - Learn how ease security enforcement (ex: password rotation) by centralizing the account with Entra.

• Azure Data Studio Retirement | Microsoft Community Hub (carlosrobles) - I used in love Azure Data Studio and I'm a little bit sad to see it go away but I think it's for the best since all the functionality will be now available in vs code extension

Miscellaneous

• A case for getting dressed every day (Salma) - I agree one hundred percent with her it's so true.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

 If you have interesting content, share

 ~frank

Reading Notes #629

This edition of ReadingNotes covers new AI tools, WSL updates, .NET 9 features, and debugging tips with GitHub Copilot. Plus, insightful podcasts on .NET Aspire, productivity tools, and frontend engineering. 

Happy reading and listening!

Programming

• Dramatically faster package restores with .NET 9's new NuGet resolver - .NET Blog (Jeff Kluge) - A major operation to make our experience better. This post shares how I was done.

• Blazor WebAssembly debugging with Visual Studio (Mark Downie) - Marvelous! New and improved! Who wouldn't be happy about that?

• Using Dependabot to Manage .NET SDK Updates - .NET Blog (Jamie Magee) - Dependabot is one of those tools that when you start using it you wonder how you were doing it before. The new update now supports the SDK, lovely.

AI

• Evaluate the quality of your AI applications with ease - .NET Blog (Wendy Breiding) - Interesting new tools. Add 3 packages to your project and a few lines of code to get started.

• Transform your debugging experience with GitHub Copilot - Visual Studio Blog (Wendy Breiding) - An interesting new tool in Visual Studio where Copilot, our AI pair programmer, can join us to help while debugging.

Podcasts

• David Fowler: Architecture of .NET Aspire - Episode 322 (Azure & DevOps Podcast) - .NET Aspire described from the inside. Learn more about what it is, and what planned for it.

• 95. From Dev Containers to OpenTelemetry: Mastering .NET Productivity - with Alex Thissen (Betatalks the podcast) - There are so many great tools that so many of us don't know yet are effraid to start using. Learn a bit more about them in this episode.

• 96. The Evolving Craft of Frontend Engineering: Balancing Complexity and Simplicity - with Stefan Judis (Betatalks the podcast) - The web frontend is not the same as a few years ago. There are many frameworks and eengineers are trying to make them structured but also performant and light.

Miscellaneous

• What’s new in the Windows Subsystem for Linux in November 2024 (Craig Loewen) - The RedHat distro joins the possibly in WSL, an improved administration and security.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you have interesting content, share 

Reading Notes #628

For this week reading notes, I have some exciting blog posts and podcast episodes. Covering topics including .NET scaffolding, Visual Studio updates, the Builder Pattern in C#, and OpenAPI in .NET 9. Plus, tips on validating identity with GitHub, improving Azure Identity, and podcast highlights on GitHub Universe and presentation skills. 

Cloud

• Better Azure Identity authentication support and performance during local development with .NET Aspire (Anthony Simmon) - A cool demo/tutorial with all the code snippets and explanations.

Programming

• dotnet scaffold - Next Generation Content Creation for .NET - .NET Blog (Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi) - Yay! Scaffolding CLI and it looks well done too! It's time to try it and if you are interested it's an OSS project.

• Making you more productive with Visual Studio v17.12 - Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - Mad's blog post are always synonym of fun and happiness as it means Visual Studio has new cool features that ease or day and make us more productive. I love that that simple copy error message one.

• The Builder Pattern in C# [2024] - This is a very nice post that explains clearly with code different scenarios where that pattern would make sense.

• OpenAPI document generation in .NET 9 (Mike Kistler) - This is a great new feature in NET9 when building APIs. The post shares how to update existing APIs to get it. I'm looking forward to migrating my stuff.

Podcasts

• 435: GitHub Universe Recap + M4 is here with a NEW Mac mini!!! (Merge Conflict) - Cool summary and nice news for iOS user about xCode.

• How to prepare for a nerve-wracking presentation (Modern Mentor) - Good strategies for new or experienced speakers.

Miscellaneous

• Validate your identity on Bluesky with your GitHub account (Mark Downie) - That's a neat trick, sir!

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you have interesting content, share it!

~Frank

Reading Notes #626

Kick off your week with this curated list of must-read tech articles. From .NET modernisation patterns and new C# 13 LINQ methods to open-source contributions and thought-provoking reads, there's plenty to explore. 

Enjoy!

Programming

• Microsoft Introduces Modern Web App Pattern for .NET: Accelerating App Modernization to the Cloud (Almir Vuk) - This is a nice post that overviews pattern that Microsoft suggest to use.

• New LINQ methods in C# 13: Index, CountBy, AggregateBy (Tim Deschryver) - Simple and efficient post that shows new command coming up in C#13.

• The Legacy Coder's Guide to .NET Conf 2024 (DeeDee Walsh) - .Net Conf is coming up and how doesn't like some suggestions about wish sessions? This will be a great event for new and experienced developers.

• .NET Upgrade Assistant Now Supports Upgrading to Centralized Package Mangement (McKenna Barlow) - Cool tool that become even better I just wish you had an option to run it from let's say Linux

Open-Source

• .NET MAUI Welcomes Syncfusion Open-source Contributions (David Ortinau) - This is a really exciting news! Very happy to see a great company like Syncfusion investing in Open source like this.

Miscellaneous

• Why Don’t You Fucking Retire Already? (James Whittaker) - Food for thoughts no doubt. It's still a delight to read you sir Whittaker.

• Microsoft Tech Community: Upgrade complete (Allie Thompson) - It was time. I didn't dig too much and looking forward to experience the new features as a writer but also as a reader.

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you have interesting content, share it!

~ Frank

Reading Notes #619

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

You also read something you liked? Share it!

Suggestion of the week

• Easily dock and float tool windows (Mads Kristensen) - Oh my! One of the best post I read since a long time. It cannot me more accurate, funny, nor useful.

Programming

• DevOps for Beginners: A Complete Roadmap to Get Started (Harshhaa Vardhan Reddy) - This post is a really good overview of DevOps. If your are interested to he topic but don't know where to start,that one is for you.

• How to Build Frontend Apps 10x Faster (Anmol Baranwal) - An interesting tools that you install that act as middle man and helps while developing and testing.

• Switch Branches in Git Without Losing Your Work (Asad Bukhari) - Quick little tip to save time with Git.

• Incorporate GitHub Copilot into your daily flow (Rhea,Sinem,Mika) - Copilot go more accessible!This post summarizes how Copilot will be easier to use with suggested code. That's a good example of product feedback well used, everybody wins!

• 5 Must-Have NuGet Packages for .NET Developers: Elevate Your Code! (Ken Fedorov) - Nice post that shares indeed useful packages.

• GitHub Models and .NET: Building Generative AI apps for engineers (April Yoho) - Very easy to use and accessible, those AI models are perfect for developers. GitHub successfully removed many blockers that aloud a fast onboarding experience.

• Semantic Kernel - Multi agent systems (Bart Wullems) - Nice quick post with a lot of to code to helps understand the concept.

~Frank

Reading Notes #616

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

 

You also read something you liked? Share it!

 

Cloud

• Static Sites on Azure Storage vs Azure Static Web Apps (John Kilmister) - Yes both options are available.Do you know the differences?

Programming

• Easier to fix async exceptions (Mark Downie) - Debugging Asynchronous code as been always more complicated, looking forward to seeing (and using) that new capability in .NET 9.

• Simplify development with Dev Container templates for Azure SQL Database (Carlos Robles) - I love that! Instead or having multiple containers (database, dev environment) we can now have only one. No special configuration, faster into the code.

• The 3 Most Common Security Mistakes Developers Make () - This is an interesting post that shares popular mistakes yes but also some better practices accessible to all.

• How to make your web page faster before it even loads (Salma Alam-Naylor) - To make sure our users have he best experience possible it important to fine-tune some little details. This post goes deep and explains them very well.

Miscellaneous

• How to save your online writing from disappearing forever ( Barbara Krasnoff) - A series of online tools that could keep copies of the blog post you put online.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #611

Welcome to this week’s edition of Reading Notes! In this roundup, we explore a variety of topics across cloud, programming, databases, and AI. From understanding Docker’s USER instruction to styling Blazor components with CSS, I’ve got you covered. Let’s dive in!

Suggestion of the week

• Understanding the Docker USER Instruction (Jay Schmidt) - A great post to that explains really clearly the basic usage of user when building our container. After reading this post you should feel confident to follow this best practices.

Cloud

• Azure Static Web Apps–SWA CLI behind the scenes (Bart Wullems) - Cool post to that quickly explains how the CLIworks and a few different tools.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Styling Blazor Components with CSS (Claudio Bernasconi) - That will solve an issue I was having... Blazor for the win!

• Is Your ASP.NET Core Application Running In A Container? (Adam Storr) - Very neat tip to know when the App is or not in a container.

• Setting up NGINX load balancer for .NET WebApi (Oskar Dudycz) - Very well done tutorial to set a reverse proxy.

Databases

• Automating SQL Deployments using GitHub Actions - Part 2 (Eduardo Pivaral) - That's pretty neat. Of course, there is a SQL option but I never thought about it. Excellent idea to keep everything in one place with versions.

AI

• Updated Documentation for Semantic Kernel (Sophia Lagerkrans-Pandey) - Nice update in the documentation, new content new look.

~frank

Reading Notes #601

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

Having interesting content? Share it! 

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing: Azure Developers (Mehul Harry) - Looking forward to this event. I have the pleasure to present a session with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder. Join us!

Cloud

• Demystifying Azure CLI pagnination (Jeremy Li) - That's great! It's so sad when all the information is "throw" on us without any control and it's on us to find our "needle" we are looking for in those screens full of line. This will definitely helps.

Programming

• Blazor Basics: Localization Using Resource Files (Claudio Bernasconi) - A nice and complete tutorial.

• What's new for .NET in Ubuntu 24.04 - .NET Blog (Richard Lander) - This is a good news! Definitely going in the right direction.

• Minimal APIs Nuget Packages (Shawn Wildermuth) - Same great tools but new names to make it easier to remember and more of the same family.

• Useful features in Entity Framework Core 8 for your application (Dennis Frühauff) - A great post with detailed explanation and code samples that covers the major new feature and enhancements of EF8.

• Better Minimal APIs Endpoint Organization With Carter in ASP.NET Core (Ivan Gechev) - Carter looks like a very useful library definitely something to explore a bit more.

• Warp’s Team plan for developer productivity is available today (Melanie Crissey) - I started using this terminal a few weeks ago on a personal device. It's interesting to see all the different options an the possibilities for teams.

Open Source

• Open sourcing MS-DOS 4.0 - Microsoft Open Source Blog (Scott Hanselman, Jeff Wilcox) - That a cool news! I'm curious what people will do with it, what kind of experiments they will try.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #598

It's reading notes time! It is a habit I started a long time ago, close to 600 weeks ago in fact, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• What is cloud native and how can it generate business value? (George Fitzmaurice) - Interesting thoughts about cloud native, how to see it, how to se it's value.

• Using Kudu in Azure to Debug an Azure Function (Paul Michaels) - Kudu is a fantastic tools that not enough people know about.

Programming

• Is Your Container Image Really Distroless? (Laurent Goderre) - Nice post that explains a new way to improve security and more while building our container by going distroless.

• Blazor Basics: Improved Performance with Component Virtualization (Claudio Bernasconi) - When applicable the lazy loading makes a huge difference. This simple tutorial explains how things works and has all the code to back it up.

• Azure PowerShell Tips and Tricks (Paul Harrison) - PowerShell is a very interesting and useful script language.All those tips are pure wisdom!

DevOps

• Beautiful .NET Test Reports Using GitHub Actions (Sean Killeen) - It's true that the unit test result in Azure DevOps looks amazing. Pretty nice adaptation in GitHub Action, could/ should it be native?

Open Source

• Linus Torvalds announces Linux 6.8 (Brian Fagioli) - Nice post.I feel we see more often distro new release making "the e news".

• Debian’s Dedication to Security: A Robust Foundation for Docker Developers (David Dooling) - Happy to see such a fundamental distribution take seriously security as core idea.

AI

• Building a Video Analysis and Transcription Chatbot with the GenAI Stack (David Cardozo) - This post explains a very cool project with generative AI and docker in different technology, very inspiring!

~Frank

Reading Notes #597

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Suggestion of the week

• Building Interactive Blazor Apps with WebAssembly (Ed Charbeneau) - Wow! A very well crafted tutorial that guides us, while explaining why we need to do what we're are doing at each steps.

Cloud

• Azure Spring Clean: Leveraging Azure Copilot To Better Manage Your Tenant (Sam Cogan) - It's always a good idea to do a tour of our resources in the cloud to see what's there. With that new AI assistant it will be easier to ask questions when we are not sure how to search.

Programming

• Blazor WebAssembly Virtual File System Access (Michael Washington) - A nice tutorial the show us how to keep file (aka data) in the browser of the visitor. All the code is available.

• ASP.NET Core Basics: Organize Projects—Architectural Patterns (Assis Zang) - Architecture helps us to have clear and easy to maintain code. And this is what is ready important. Besides that the code need to do what we want, obviously.

• Automate Your GitHub Workflow with Bash Scripting (arjun) - Remember, everything is scriptable...

• Blazor Render Mode – How To Avoid Dependency Injection Woes (Nick Cosentino) - Failing is learning. In this post the author shares why is Blazor app wasn't behaving as he expect and what he did to fix it.

Open Source

• My new open-source repository to schedule all your content! (Nevo David) - This post shares what look like a fantastic scheduling tool, I'll have to try this project definitely useful

Miscellaneous

• Starting CockroachDB in Single User Mode with a Dockerfile (Bryan Hogan) - I really believe that database in a container is the best option for many developers. Here a simple example with cockroachDB.

~frank

Problem in my local paradise: Func CLI doesn't upgrade

Last Friday, I encountered an issue while trying to run my Azure Function locally using VS Code. Despite having installed the Azure Function extension and the Azure Functions Core Tools, I was unable to execute the func start command without encountering an error saying that no functions could be found. 

In this post, I will share the various troubleshooting steps I took, what didn’t work, and how I ultimately resolved the issue. Spoiler alert: everything is now working correctly.

The Problem

My Azure Function is a .NET 8 Isolated HTTP trigger. When I attempted to execute the func start command, it failed to find any functions. A quick look at the documentation, I discovered that version 4 of the Core Tools was required for type Isolated process. However, I had already installed version 4 via the update popup in VS Code.

Something was wrong. I tried func --version and it returned 3.x.xx, weird... And this is how I knew there was a problem.

Failed attempts

Following the Azure Functions Core Tools documentation I found that there were multiple methods to install the Core Tools. Because that laptop was on Windows 11, I started by downloading the func-cli-x64.msi installer and run it. It didn't work, the version 3 was still there.

I tried to install the Core Tools v4 using NPM: npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. It didn't work.

I tried to uninstall the version 3 with npm uninstall -g azure-functions-core-tools. I tried using the command palette in VSCode

Still nothing was changing anything, the version 3 was still there.

The Solution

What works, was using Chocolatey command choco uninstall azure-functions-core-tools to uninstall the version 3. Some how, it must have been install at the different location or some "config" got lost at some point (it's a developer laptop after all), and the other methods (npm, msi, vscode) couldn't see that version 3 was installed.

After that, I installed the version 4 using NPM npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools@4. And it worked! The func --version returned 4.0.5571 and the func start command found my function.

I wrote this quick post hoping that it can help someone else, as I cannot be the only one with this problem.

~Frank

Reading Notes #593

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Azure Functions Extensibility - Runtime Scaling (Tomasz Pęczek) - A well written post that goes in the details.Perfect to really understand how things works.

Programming

• 5 Powerful HTML Attributes That Don't Require JavaScript (Ashish Patel) - Wow! I didn't even known that most of those attributes existed..

• Docker Init for ASP.NET Core Compared to VS or VS Code Extensions (Julie Lerman) - awesome comparison! I've been thinking about doing it for a little while. Another great post from Julie.

• Blazor and .NET 8: How I Built a Fast and Flexible Website (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - optimisation is often a step that people forgets, but it's one that is extremely rewarding.This series seams very interesting, we will s| more of those in the notes...

• Warp, the modern terminal, is now available for Linux (Aloke Desai, David Stern) - I didn't heard of that terminal before. It looks interesting! Looking forward to try it.

• Using Visual Studio Code for .NET MAUI Development (Vijay Anand) - it's incredible the progress that was done in such little time I'm looking forward to try it.

• The FAST and the Fluent: A Blazor story - .NET Blog (Vincent Baaij) - Nice post that teach us a bit of history. I'm fan of Fluent UI and Blazor...and more recently of the Fluent UI Blazor library. I think it's a must for all Blazor developers.

• GraphQL vs. REST—Which is Better for API Design? (Hassan Djirdeh) - Pretty cool comparison of different type/design of APIs.

Miscellaneous

• Windows AI Studio : Getting Started ( Shreyan Fernandes) - Nice tools the works locally. I'm installing it, will you?

~Frank

Reading Notes #588

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Programming

• Developing & Working with .NET Containers on Windows ARM Devices (James Montemagno) - I'm a big fan and user of dev containers.But I didn't know it was hard for Arm device owner.Love the idea.If you never heard of Podman here a nice teaser.

• Overview over Microsoft's developer tools for Windows (Aaron Junker)) - So many great tools to make the dev experience even better on Windows.Did you see so many are oss projects.

• How to deal with API rate limits (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Perfect post to learn why rate limit exists (its easier to manage them if we understand them), and a few suggestions on how to deal with them.

• Persisting Data Volumes With .NET Aspire | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell) - Great tips to be more efficient with .NET Aspire preview 2

~Frank

Reading Notes #586

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Serverless Architecture Patterns and Best Practices (Faith Oyama) - Nice overview of different patterns in the serverless world. Here AWS lamda are used but it's true for all serverless situation.

• Azure Static Web App - Authentication using pre-configured providers (Bart Wullems) - A quick intro to authentication and authorization for SWA, agnostics of any programmatic languages.

Programming

• FluentUI.Blazor v4.3 (Denis Voituron) - I recently migrate one of my website to use FlunentUI Blazor, and the experience is amazing. It looks great and required less code from me.

• WebAssembly: 4 Predictions for 2024 (Matt Butcher) - Nice post that review 2023 predictions and sets 2024 ones explaining why it could happened.

• Creating an ASP.NET Core Web App with Docker Support and GitHub Packages (Bjoern Meyer) - A nice quick but details tutorial with a step by step approach.

Podcasts

• Dockerfiles have versions? (DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling) - Interesting episode about a little thing that could have a big impact in our CICD and I'm sure is overlooked.

• Playing the YouTube game with Nick Chapsas (Coding After Work Podcast) - Great interview with a successful technical content creator that do things "the good way".

• Teammateship with NBA champion Shane Battier (A Bit of Optimism) - reat conversation about team work, what it really means and what to achieve it.

• How to Focus When the World Feels on Fire (Modern Mentor) - Quick thoughts and tips to stay focus. Sometimes it's harder and other times and having a fews tricks his always a good idea.

Miscellaneous

• Twitter Ruined Your Link Previews: Here's How Cloudinary Can Help (Salma Alam-Naylor) - Wow! This looks like an amazing tool.I need to look dipper into this.

• A Job at Microsoft: Getting and Passing the Interview (Rod Trent ) - Interesting post that will certainly be very helpful for many.

~Frank