Is it meant to be possible to debug .NET projects running under .NET Aspire in Docker containers?

[zejji]

When working with .NET projects not running under .NET Aspire, it is easy to debug .NET code running inside a Docker container using Visual Studio's fast build feature as described here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/containers/edit-and-refresh

I am working on a new distributed application running under .NET Aspire and would like:

• each of the .NET projects to run within their own Docker containers; and
• to be able to set breakpoints in any of the .NET projects and debug my code in Visual Studio.

The reason I need to use Docker containers for my .NET development are:

• I would like to use Python.NET in my .NET services, so would like to install a Python distribution into my .NET Docker containers; and
• I would like to use Yarp to reverse proxy traffic to other Docker services which are not managed by my Aspire app host, so need the various containers to be on the same Docker network.

However, it is not clear to me from the documentation whether this is intended to be possible and, if so, how. The documentation is currently ambiguous and it would be great if it could be updated if this is indeed possible.

If this is not possible, is the intention that anyone wishing to run .NET projects inside Docker containers use Docker Compose and the standalone Aspire dashboard instead?

[davidfowl]

Aspire doesn't run projects in a container today. When we do add this feature, we'll integrate with the IDE for debugging.

[zejji]

Thanks for the quick response - looking forward to that when it arrives!