Ability to build a bicep file from VSCode file context menu

[slapointe]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have no quick way to build a bicep file into an ARM template without invoking a terminal command like az bicep build or bicep build myself.

Describe the solution you'd like
I'd like the ability to right click a bicep file in VSCode treeview and choose Build to produce an ARM template without going into a terminal window.

[alex-frankel]

My guess is someone with VS code extension authoring should be able to implement this pretty quickly - that's why I am tagging it as a good first issue.

This also opens pandora's box for deploying bicep from a context menu :)

[alex-frankel]

cc @MarcusFelling who has expressed interest in this as well. There may already be an issue.

[MarcusFelling]

+1 related to #1862 #1182

[anthony-c-martin]

I started on the implementation for build under #191 - it's old, but the code diff might be useful to whoever is looking to implement this.

[StephenWeatherford]

Building/decompiling would be very easy to implement. Deploy is more complicated, depending on what we do (e.g. integration with the Azure subscription extension and Azure pane so you can sign in?, or just a “run a command in the terminal” experience, which would be a lot simpler).

It would also be pretty easy to have a bicep->JSON preview window that could be opened to the right side (like the bicep playground, but local). Would that be interesting?

[slapointe]

It would also be pretty easy to have a bicep->JSON preview window that could be opened to the right side (like the bicep playground, but local). Would that be interesting?

Would that generate the JSON preview in a secondary window or would that build/show the build result in a preview window?

I prefer the later.

[StephenWeatherford]

Not sure what you mean. I was thinking it would show the result of building the bicep file (the built JSON) as you type.

[slapointe]

Not sure what you mean. I was thinking it would show the result of building the bicep file (the built JSON) as you type.

I was thinking having to save the file, invoke the command on the saved file and see the generated result.

Not necessarily as you type.

If your scenario supported both, the "as you type" is interesting and complementary, but my first need is more build an existing file.

[StephenWeatherford]

Gotcha.