Last week, Microsoft released Aspire 13.6. The release adds persistent telemetry and run history to the dashboard, along with docked terminals and database REPLs, first-party hosting for Java and Rust, and two Azure preview integrations. It also brings coordinated .NET project builds, portable volume paths, new CLI and Visual Studio Code workflows, and several breaking changes.
The dashboard now stores resource snapshots and telemetry in a SQLite database. When started by an AppHost, it uses run persistence by default and keeps up to ten runs per application. Completed runs are read-only. As stated in the release notes, the database has no encryption or authorization layer, and Aspire does not set Windows ACLs on the data directory.
Default limits for console logs, structured logs, and traces rise to 100,000 each. Also, the dashboard now ships as a Native AOT executable and moves to Fluent UI Blazor v5.
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(Run persistence by default, Source: Official Microsoft documentation)
Furthermore, AppHosts can now open their own terminals in a dashboard dock through the experimental TerminalService API. A new WithRepl option on PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, SQL Server, Redis, and Valkey resources opens the client bundled in the container. According to the release, these REPLs use the resource's real credentials and are not read-only, so they stay disabled unless a developer opts in.
Four hosting integrations arrive as prerelease packages. Aspire.Hosting.Java supports executable JARs, Maven and Gradle wrappers, Spring Boot, and Quarkus. Aspire.Hosting.Rust models Cargo applications through AddRustApp.
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.AddRustApp("api", "../rust-api")
.WithHttpEndpoint(env: "PORT")
.WithExternalHttpEndpoints();
builder.Build().Run();
Both build on work from the Aspire Community Toolkit, as described in the release notes. Azure Connector Namespace and Azure Container Apps Sandboxes are also added, with a note that both need preview access in the Azure subscription.
As reported, AddDotnetProject now places compatible projects into shared restore and build groups, which avoids repeated restores. Volume mounts on projects and executables accept a new env argument, so an application reads one environment variable for its data path locally and after deployment.
TypeScript AppHosts load appsettings.json from their own directory, and Deno 2 or later can run the TypeScript AppHost.
The CLI adds a --launch-profile option to aspire run and aspire start. According to the source, agent setup in aspire new and aspire init now leaves the Aspire MCP server unselected, which makes MCP opt-in. The Visual Studio Code extension lets coding agents start and stop AppHosts, and adds deploy and publish actions to the Aspire pane.
Among the breaking changes, MongoDB resources now use TLS during local runs when a certificate is available, which replaces the earlier plaintext default. The Cosmos DB emulator defaults to the Linux-based vNext image and, as stated, existing classic emulator data does not carry over.
Azure Front Door origin names change on upgrade, and connection names with hyphens get a portable environment-variable alias that some deployment targets emit on their own.
Other changes in this release are Azure Container Apps Express environments, Microsoft Foundry Toolboxes, MongoDB replica sets, Blazor WebAssembly debugging, and the removal of the GitHub Models integration.
For interested readers, the full What's New in Aspire 13.6 page, including the complete inventory, migration notes, and breaking changes, is available on the Aspire documentation site.