az --version performs an update check

[jessehouwing]

Describe the bug

When running az --version an update check is performed against az-cli and the extensions.

Azure Pipelines' AzureCLI task runs az --version to capture the version details in the logs.

It would save quite a bit of CPU if az-cli would not perform an update check in a CI/CD scenario.

There already is an core.auto-upgrade=false option, would it not make sense to piggy back on that or to add another config setting to turn off update checking.

Related command

az --version

Errors

N/a

Issue script & Debug output

N/a

Expected behavior

No update check is performed in CI.

Environment Summary

2.52.0

Additional context

No response

[yonzhan]

Thank you for opening this issue, we will look into it.

[jiasli]

There already is an core.auto-upgrade=false option

According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/update-azure-cli#automatic-update, it should be auto-upgrade.enable=yes.

We do have az version command that doesn't make any network request (#27457 (comment)). I think what you are asking for is an option to disable update check in az --version, while #27457 asks for an option to enable version check in az version. 🤣

[jessehouwing]

Yeah, have a way to disable network access for these commands. Either with an extra parameter to --check-updates true or a setting in the config file or an environment variable.

Ideally az would detect it's in CI/CD and turn off a load of stuff that only adds logspam and slowdowns by default.

It looks like az init is making a start of collecting the desired settings ;).

[jiasli]

az init is actually a secret project. May I know where you heard of it? 🤣

[jessehouwing]

az init is actually a secret project. May I know where you heard of it? 🤣

I was looking for a way to set the default config settings, and I tried it on the console. Lo and behold it downloaded the extension and ran.

I supplied a PR for it to add a few more settings.

[jiasli]

Ideally az would detect it's in CI/CD and turn off a load of stuff that only adds logspam and slowdowns by default.

This is another topic we are still internally investigating. Not only Azure DevOps, we are aiming to find a unified way to detect the running environment - Azure DevOps, Azure Cloud Shell, GitHub Actions, etc.

[jiasli]

az init is only an experimental feature we made in Azure/azure-cli-extensions#3969. It is never expected to be used in production. Also, az init allows the user to select the running environment. It can't really detect the running environment.

[jessehouwing]

az init is only an experimental feature we made in Azure/azure-cli-extensions#3969. It is never expected to be used in production. Also, az init allows the user to select the running environment. It can't really detect the running environment.

Yeah, I figured as much. The experimental nature at least. But it does seem to reccomend certain settings in an automated environment.

As you mentioned above auto-upgrade.enable=yes in the docs turns out to probably be auto-upgrade.enable=true in the code, at least there are quite a few issues that dispute the correct syntax. I went looking for what settings there are and what their values should/could be and there is VERY little documentation on those topics.

I ended up doing a search through the codebase instead. But it lead to some useful insights!

I've been digging into the performance of az and az devops in Azure Pipelines and GtHub Hosted Runners.

• Runs az and az-devops during warmup actions/runner-images#8294
• [enhancement]: Remove az --version from AzureCLI microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks#19006 & [AzureCLIV2] Replaces az --version with az version microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks#19039
• [enhancement]: Consider caching .azure-devops cache folder microsoft/azure-pipelines-tasks#19007
• az --help causes a command index rebuild #27444
• First call performance in Windows hosted runner (Azure pipelines) #27404
• Bug: the azure-devops cache folder location is computed differently in different places azure-devops-cli-extension#1366
• configures survey messages and telemetry azure-cli-extensions#6793
• [Feature Request] Install keyring by default or offer a way to install keyring without causing error messages azure-devops-cli-extension#1367
• az cli seems to spends time looking for account config, even if it doesn't need them #27439

If these each shave off a couple of seconds, over the number of invocations on the hosted runners worldwide it would save a couple of trees and a bunch of water.

Ideally az would detect it's in a CI/CD environment and turn off:

• Telemetry
• Disk logging
• Error recommendations
• Colors
• Auto-updates
• Version checks
• Survey banners
• auto-installation of missing extensions
• Randomly downloading new pip packages (like keyring) or helm versions or other unexpectedly missing dependencies. I'd rather have it fail in CI/CD than for it to download versions of files I haven't been able to vet.

And would allow:

• Setting all config values as environment variables (see: AZURE_AUTO-UPGRADE_ENABLE is not a valid env var name on Linux #19200)
• Letting me tell it what token to rely on instead of trying to figure that out automatically.