Following up on the generally available release of VM, ACS, Storage and Network commands in the new Azure CLI 2.0, we are today announcing a new Azure CLI interactive Shell preview mode release, in addition to the generally available release of following command modules: ACR, Batch, KeyVault, and SQL.
Azure CLI 2.0 provides an idiomatic command line interface that integrates natively with Bash and POSIX tools. It is easy to install, use and learn. You can use it to run one command at a time, as well as to run automation scripts composed of multiple commands, including other BASH commands. To support this, commands are not interactive and will error out when provided with incomplete or incorrect input.
However, there are circumstances when you might prefer an interactive experience, such as when learning the Azure CLI’s capabilities, command structures and output formats. Azure CLI Shell (az-shell) provides an interactive mode in which to run Azure CLI 2.0 commands. It provides autocomplete dropdowns, auto-cached suggestions combined with on the fly documentation, including examples of how each command is used. Azure CLI Shell provides an experience that makes it easier to learn and use Azure CLI commands.
We invite you to install and use the new interactive shell for Azure CLI 2.0. You can use it in a Docker image we created, or install it locally on your Mac or Windows machine. It works with your existing Azure CLI installations, and you can use the commands side-by-side in az-shell or another command shell of your choice (BASH on MAC/linux and cmd.exe on Windows).
