AspireCommander.Hosting 0.2.1

Aspire Commander

Aspire Commander adds a Midnight Commander-inspired, dual-pane file browser to any resource in a .NET Aspire AppHost. It runs as a terminal-enabled companion resource, so the original resource process and debugging experience remain unchanged.

Install

Add the hosting integration to the AppHost project:

dotnet add package AspireCommander.Hosting --version 0.2.0

The package bundles the terminal application and copies it to the AppHost output (commander/), so no other package is needed. It targets .NET 11 and Aspire 13.6.

Use

Call WithCommander() on any Aspire resource:

var api = builder.AddProject<Projects.Api>("api");

api.WithCommander(options =>
{
    options.Path = "../Api";
    options.Columns = 160;
    options.Rows = 45;
});

This adds an api-commander companion. Start the AppHost, select that resource in the Aspire dashboard, and open Terminal. The default path is the AppHost directory. Relative paths are resolved from the AppHost directory.

The return value is the Commander companion builder, so it can be configured like another Aspire executable resource:

var commander = api.WithCommander(options =>
{
    options.ResourceName = "api-files";
    options.Path = "../Api";
});

commander.WithEnvironment("MY_SETTING", "value");

Use arrow keys to move, Enter to open a directory or preview a file, Backspace to go up, Tab to switch panes, R to refresh, and Q to quit.

Filesystem scope

For container resources, Commander browses the target container through its container runtime, starting at /. The browser cannot navigate above that root, so an Alpine resource shows only the Alpine container filesystem. For other resource types, Commander continues to browse the configured host directory. On a container, Path is an absolute path inside the container rather than a host path.

WithTerminal() is experimental in Aspire 13.6, and the hosting package acknowledges ASPIRETERMINAL001 internally so consuming AppHosts do not need a warning suppression.

Pack locally

dotnet pack src/AspireCommander.sln -c Release -o artifacts

The solution produces a single package, AspireCommander.Hosting, containing the WithCommander() Aspire integration and the bundled terminal executable. AspireCommander.Console is an internal project and is not published separately.