Excluding a file in Azure Function from Azure Deployment

Question

We have an Azure Function project that contains a specifically named file that makes local debugging much easier. However we do not want that file to ever be deployed to Azure.

The standard package and publish process explicitly knows about the file named local.settings.json so that file is never deployed.

Some online docs and posts say that you can include a file in your project called .funcignore that has the same syntax as .gitignore. In there you should be able to specify files you do not want packaged.

The file we have is called local.funcdebugging.json and has the file properties of

Build Action: None
Copy to Output Dir: Copy if newer

Our .funcignore file looks like this

## Files that should be ignored from Azure Deployment

# EasyAuth Debugging file
local.funcdebugging.json

Despite these settings the debugging file still get's deployed. How can I prevent this file being part of the Azure Deployment?

When locally debugging it is in "\\bin\\Debug\\netcoreapp2.1\\" but when it is deployed to Azure it is in "wwwroot" — Pat Long - Munkii Yebee, Nov 19 '19 at 08:50
if it's in you gitignore, and it's still being deployed, I think it means this file is already in the source code. — Thiago Custodio, Nov 19 '19 at 14:57
gitignore? I have not included it in gitignore as I don't want it excluded from my git repo. It is the Azure Deployment I want it excluded from — Pat Long - Munkii Yebee, Nov 19 '19 at 14:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 20 '19 at 13:23

We have been unable to get .funcignore to work.

Our alternative solution is

Remove "local.funcdebugging.json" from repo
Add a markdown debugging readme that explains how to use a file called
local.funcdebugging.json and include some sample content
Add a "local.funcdebugging.json" entry to .gitignore in case future debugging attempts don't get tidied up and it ends up being added to repo and therefore deployed

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 14 '20 at 13:09

It seems like you're trying to publish a .csproj. It's possible to customize what's copied to the publish directory with the CopyToPublishDirectory option. That's the directory created by the dotnet publish command.

For example in our case, we don't want to publish our Typescript source code, only the generated javascript code. We use the following configuration:

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Update="wwwroot\src\**\*.*" CopyToPublishDirectory="Never" />
  <Content Update="wwwroot\vendor\**\*.*" CopyToPublishDirectory="Never" />
  <Content Update="Locales\**\*.*" CopyToPublishDirectory="Always" />
</ItemGroup>

With this, the source files are copied to the output directory, so they're available during debugging, but they're not copied to the publish directory, and thus it's not included in the deployed package.

Excluding a file in Azure Function from Azure Deployment

2 Answers2