Azure Command-line Tools Build 2023 Announcements

Hello Everyone!

At Microsoft Build 2023, we are announcing several new capabilities and improvements for Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell. We aim to provide the most secure, complete, and usable tools to manage your Azure resources. In this release, we want to highlight the following areas:

• New services supported
• Authentication improvements in preview
• Usability improvements

Since Microsoft Ignite in 2022, we added coverage for 11 new Azure Resource Provider(RP)'s services.

• DataProtection
• LoadTesting
• NetworkFunction  
• ArcResourceBridge 
• StorageMover
• CognitiveSearch  
• AutoManage
• DNSResolver
• MobileNetwork
• VoiceServices
• Workloads

We are committed to making Azure resources manageable through the command line tool of your choice. Supporting this commitment, over the last 6 months, both Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell have released the commands associated with new Azure resource providers within 30 days of their GA.  As a result of this effort, we have added 11 PowerShell modules or CLI extensions supporting new services and will continue to have new features from Azure RP services onboard with us.

We also plan to publish the preview version of our official release so you can experiment, prepare your pipeline and environment, and provide feedback early so we can respond to urgent issues.

Highlighted Updates:

Preview Support for Web Account Manager (WAM)

Both Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell have released preview support for WAM, a Windows 10+ component that acts as an authentication broker. Using an authentication broker such as WAM has numerous benefits:

• Enhanced security. See Token protection.
• Support for Windows Hello, conditional access, and FIDO keys.
• Fast single sign-on.
• Bug fixes and enhancements shipped with Windows.

To enable WAM, run the following commands.

At the current stage of development, there are a few known limitations to WAM:

• WAM is available on Windows 10 and later and on Windows Server 2019 and later. On macOS, Linux, and earlier versions of Windows, we automatically fall back to a browser.
• Microsoft Accounts (for example, @outlook.com or @live.com) are currently unsupported. We are working with the Microsoft Identity team to add support for these in the near future.

Azure CLI now fully supports tab completion on Windows PowerShell

When typing in a command followed by a parameter, pressing the tab key will display a list of available options for that parameter. This saves users time and effort in remembering specific arguments or looking them up in the documentation.

This new capability not only applies to commands and parameters but also extends to values such as account name and subscription name.

Azure CLI has optimized the size of the installation package on Windows and Linux

In the past months, Azure CLI reduced the MSI package size by 30.6%. We are also investing in optimizing the Linux package and CLI Docker image. In Ubuntu 22.04, the Azure CLI package size was reduced by 40.3%.

More enhancement and fine-tuned AI-based recommendations

Azure CLI already supports AI-based recommendations for more than 200 scenarios in the command line window and inserts recommended scenarios in VS Code. This helps users to improve their experience of using the command line to prevent encountering problems in execution and programming.

Breaking Changes

Our next release with breaking changes will accompany Microsoft Ignite in November 2023.
To read more about the breaking changes in this version, see our Upcoming Breaking Changes doc and ensure your environment is ready to install the newest version of Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell.

• Azure CLI: Upcoming breaking changes in Azure CLI | Microsoft Learn
• Azure PowerShell: Upcoming breaking changes in Azure PowerShell | Microsoft Learn

We are working on improving warning messages for breaking changes as shown in the following screenshots.

Azure CLI

Azure PowerShell

We plan to add attributes such as the target version and when the breaking change occurred. These enhancements will provide users with more accurate and precise information, making it easier to understand and prepare for changes.

Release Notes

These are brief highlights here but there are a lot of great, exciting new features in this release. To learn more about all the updates in the latest version, check out our release notes for a complete list.

• Azure CLI
• Azure PowerShell

Thank you!

Thank you for using the Azure command-line tools; we look forward to continuing to improve your experience.
We hope you enjoy Build and all the great products and features being released this week. We'd love to hear your feedback, so feel free to reach out anytime.

GitHub Repo:

https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli
https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell

Follow us on Twitter: @AzureCli  @azureposh