Azure App Service deployment

This guide is the Azure App Service ZIP deployment baseline for freshly generated Cephalon apps.

Use it when you want a generated host to move from scaffolded source to deterministic published output and then into an Azure App Service deployable package without relying on an IDE publish profile or source-tree deployment.

What ships now

Generated app roots from cephalon new and the app-focused dotnet new cephalon-* starters now include:

Properties/PublishProfiles/CephalonFolder.pubxml
deploy/azure-app-service/README.md
deploy/azure-app-service/deploy-zip.ps1

The generated deployment script packages the published output into azure-app-service.zip, sets WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE=1, and deploys the ZIP artifact through az webapp deploy.

Prerequisites

a generated app root from cephalon new or dotnet new cephalon-*
Cephalon* packages available either through ./.cephalon/packages or a shared package source that replaces the generated cephalon feed entry
Azure CLI installed on the machine that performs the deploy
az login already completed for the target subscription
an existing Azure App Service web app

If you still need to create the App Service app itself, follow the official ASP.NET Core App Service quickstart first and then return to this ZIP-deploy flow.

Publish the host

For scaffolded multi-project apps from cephalon new:

dotnet publish ./Acme.Store/src/Acme.Store.Host/Acme.Store.Host.csproj -p:PublishProfile=CephalonFolder

For app-starter templates from dotnet new cephalon-*:

dotnet publish ./Acme.Store.TemplateStarter/Acme.Store.TemplateStarter.csproj -p:PublishProfile=CephalonFolder

Preview the Azure deploy contract

Example for a scaffolded modular-monolith app:

pwsh ./Acme.Store/deploy/azure-app-service/deploy-zip.ps1 `
  -ResourceGroupName my-resource-group `
  -AppName my-cephalon-app `
  -Preview

The preview step still builds ./Acme.Store/artifacts/deploy/Acme.Store.Host/azure-app-service.zip, but it only prints the Azure CLI commands instead of contacting Azure.

Deploy to Azure App Service

When you are ready to deploy for real:

az login
pwsh ./Acme.Store/deploy/azure-app-service/deploy-zip.ps1 `
  -ResourceGroupName my-resource-group `
  -AppName my-cephalon-app

The generated script:

validates that the published output contains the expected host DLL and web.config
creates azure-app-service.zip under ./artifacts/deploy/<HostProjectName>/
sets WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE=1
deploys the ZIP package through az webapp deploy --type zip

If you deploy to a slot, pass -SlotName <slot-name> to the script.

Inspect the running host

Once the app is deployed, inspect:

/engine
/engine/snapshot
/engine/runtime-story
/health
/health/ready
/scalar

These routes should behave the same way they do under dotnet run, the published-output smoke path, and the container path.

Optional repo-native validation script

To replay the generated Azure App Service baseline from the Cephalon repository in one command, run:

pwsh ./scripts/validate-generated-app-app-service.ps1

That script:

scaffolds a fresh app through Cephalon.Cli
seeds ./.cephalon/packages with repo-local package artifacts
publishes the generated host through CephalonFolder.pubxml
replays the shipped App Service deploy script in preview mode
verifies that the generated ZIP package contains the expected host DLL and web.config
tears the temporary app back down afterward unless -KeepOutput is supplied