.NET Aspire team has released version 9.1 of the platform. This minor update is focused on new dashboard features and small overall improvements across different platform components.
The dashboard functionality, built into the .NET Aspire app host, is meant to closely track various aspects of the app such as logs, traces, resources, and environment configurations. In this version, it has been enhanced with six new features.
The first enhancement is that the “child” resources, that depend on other resources (like 1:N relationships), are now displayed nested under the “parent” resource instance. For example, if a database server resource has one or more databases in the .NET Aspire app, they are displayed underneath the server resource.
The resources in the dashboard now feature a more complete details pane, adding the references, back references and volume information. In addition, there is a filter button on the resources list that allows for filtering by desired resource types, state or health state.
Another small enhancement is the ability to change the language of the dashboard visualisation, independently of the browser language. It only affects the UI language, not the number and date formatting, which is still tied to browser settings.
The dashboard application has an OpenTelemetry endpoint for receiving the telemetry from client-side apps, which is restricted to allow only HTTP POST method for sending the telemetry. The allowed CORS origins are set in the configuration file. In .NET Aspire 9.1 developers can override these CORS settings and add allowed origins for custom localhost domains. It is achieved by setting the DOTNET_DASHBOARD_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS environment variable.
The last dashboard addition in this version is the possibility of downloading app logs for detailed analysis in an external tool.
Version 9.1 also includes many small updates over the entire platform. UX updates include clickable URLs in logs and start/stop buttons in the console log toolbar. Docker integration has been polished by fixing a cleanup bug, by tighter integration for Dev Containers, and by allowing the publishing of all projects and executable resources as Docker files.
Lastly, there are local development Azure integration enhancements in the new version. Specifically, Azure Service Bus, Azure Cosmos DB on Linux, and Azure SignalR are now added as emulated services, allowing developers to test them without having to use real cloud resources.
This release comes three months after the release of .NET Aspire 9.0. According to Microsoft, .NET Aspire major versions are released roughly with major .NET versions, while minor versions are released frequently and out of band.
According to comments on social media, the .NET developers appreciate the orchestration features that .NET Aspire brings to local development experience.
The official release notes hold more information about this release for interested readers, together with breaking changes in version 9.1.
