az-config.md

az config - A more versatile az configure

Background knowledge

In git, when setting username and email, the commands are

git config --global user.name "Mona Lisa"
git config --global user.email "email@example.com"

The corresponding ~/.gitconfig:

[user]
	name = Mona Lisa
	email = email@example.com

az configure currently only supports setting and listing the default section:

> az configure -h

Command
    az configure : Manage Azure CLI configuration. This command is interactive.

Arguments
    --defaults -d      : Space-separated 'name=value' pairs for common argument defaults.
    --list-defaults -l : List all applicable defaults.  Allowed values: false, true.
    --scope            : Scope of defaults. Using "local" for settings only effective under current
                         folder.  Allowed values: global, local.  Default: global.

For other sections described in Azure CLI configuration, users will have to manually edit the ~/.azure/config file, like

[core]
collect_telemetry = no
no_color = yes

[logging]
enable_log_file = no

This is inconvenient. To improve the user experience, az configure needs to ...

Support set, get and unset

These can be implemented in 2 ways:

git config convention

az configure [--set] ...
az configure --get ...
az configure --unset ...

Azure CLI convention - sub-commands

az configure is already used as a command. It is not possible to use it as a command group anymore. We need a another command group, like config:

az config set ...
az config show ...
az config remove ...

By using config, we can start from scratch and introduce new features without making breaking changes.

Support section

However, as Azure CLI doesn't support positional arguments, the config entry has to be prefixed by a parameter name like --name.

Also there is a design decision for how to divide the config entry:

[section].[name]=[value]

Don't extract anything

# Use `--set` as an argument
az configure --set core.no_color=true
# or use `set` as a sub-command
az config set --name core.no_color=true
# or omit `--name` and use positional argument
az config set core.no_color=true

Extract --section

az configure --section core --set no_color=true
# or
az config set --section core --name no_color=true

Extract --value

az configure --set core.no_color --value true
# or
az config set --name core.no_color --value true

Extract --section and --value

az configure --section core --set no_color --value true
# or
az config set --section core --name no_color --value true

⚠ Anyway, it is the destiny of --defaults and --list-defaults to be deprecated.

Benefits

This will greatly simplify the configuration process and make experimental features easier to use, like

az configure --set core.no_color=true
az configure --set core.command_index=on
az configure --set logging.log_dir=D:\logs

Additional work - migrate to settings.json

settings.json is the latest unwritten convention of Microsoft open source project, like Visual Studio Code and Windows Terminal.

Visual Studio Code

The config file is at C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json:

{
    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe",
    "terminal.integrated.scrollback": 99999,
    "editor.minimap.enabled": false,
    ...
}

Windows Terminal

The config file is at C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json:

{
    "$schema": "https://aka.ms/terminal-profiles-schema",

    "defaultProfile": "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}",

    "profiles":
    [
        {
            // Make changes here to the powershell.exe profile
            "guid": "{61c54bbd-c2c6-5271-96e7-009a87ff44bf}",
            "name": "Windows PowerShell",
            "commandline": "powershell.exe",
            "hidden": false
        },
        ...
    ],
    ...
}

Using settings.json will open up more possibilities like "hover" help (controlled by editor.hover.enabled in VSCode) using the "$schema" property: