Generate Bicep using the compose feature

The Azure Developer CLI (azd) compose feature simplifies the process of building, deploying, and managing cloud applications. By using azd compose, you can define and manage the infrastructure and application code for your project in a unified way. This guide explains how to generate Bicep code from the azd compose feature, enabling you to customize your cloud infrastructure to meet your specific requirements.

How azd compose manages infrastructure state

The azd compose feature tracks your infrastructure state in-memory during the composition process. This approach allows you to iteratively define and refine your application and infrastructure without immediately generating files or modifying your project directory.

When you run the azd infra synth command, the in-memory state is converted into Bicep files in the infra folder. At this point, the infrastructure state transitions from being managed in-memory to being represented as code, allowing for further customization.

Generate the Bicep code

To explore or customize the Bicep code used internally by azd to provision resources created by azd add, run the following command:

azd infra gen

This command generates the corresponding Bicep files in the infra folder of your app.

Managing updates with Bicep generation

When you run the azd infra gen command, you exit the azd compose workflow and the simplified init process. From this point on, any changes you make to the generated Bicep files are no longer tracked by azd compose. If you modify the Bicep files and later run azd infra gen again, your manual changes will be overwritten by the newly generated code.

Here's how a typical workflow might look:

1. You use azd add to add new Azure resources to your project. These resources are managed internally by azd.
2. Once you've finished adding resources, you run azd infra gen to generate Bicep files for those resources in the project's infra folder. At this stage, the resources are no longer managed by the azd compose workflow.
3. You can now manually update the Bicep files as you continue developing your app.
4. If you add more resources or run azd infra gen again, the contents of the infra folder will be regenerated, and any manual changes will be lost.

For this reason, the compose feature is best suited for the following scenarios:

• Creating an initial set of Azure resources for your project, then managing further updates yourself by editing the Bicep files.
• Managing your Azure resources entirely through the compose feature without running azd infra gen.

Next steps