Microsoft presents: Looking ahead: the future of AL-Go and BCContainerHelper

Overview

The session from BC TechDays looks back at nine years of Container Helper, which in the last week provisioned more than 75,000 containers, compiled half a million apps and published about a million apps. It explains why the tool is being deprecated and what replaces it: a slimmer separate module focused on the life cycle of BC environments, to be implemented as a CLI, with AL-Go functionality migrated to it gradually.

It then covers AL-Go for GitHub as the center of Business Central development: the planned move of the full BC application (about 15 million lines of AL, 35,000 files) to the BC Apps repository, current and upcoming AL-Go features, an internal PR reviewer agent, and Q&A on Azure DevOps, Linux, container speed, PowerShell versions and ALOps.

Key points

• Container Helper goes out of support on October 1st, 2027. After that it stays as a GitHub repository, is not archived, and becomes community-maintained.
• A replacement module (working name BC Container Helper 2) is targeted for the end of 2026. It covers provisioning and deprovisioning containers and running scripts in them, will not have full feature parity, and is to be built as a CLI.
• Microsoft plans a 6-month period after the replacement is ready before Container Helper is discontinued. If that timeline slips, the end-of-support date moves out too.
• AL-Go still depends heavily on Container Helper. Functionality will be migrated gradually to the new module, not in a big bang, and the new code is to be opened once one AL-Go scenario works through it.
• Workspace compilation in AL-Go lets the compiler work out dependencies and compile apps in parallel. It helps most with 10 or more apps in a repository and is not available through Container Helper.
• AL-Go has build hooks (build initialize now, build finalize coming) and test-only projects. Code coverage, automatic reruns of flaky tests, improved incremental builds and turn-based testing are described as coming.
• The BC application is planned to move to BC Apps on AL-Go by June, with some delays already. A PR reviewer agent is in internal dogfooding and will be opt-in when released.

Features

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• other “BC Apps” at 9:29
• other “run AL pipeline” at 27:09
• other “BC Container Helper” at 27:49
• other “AL Tool” at 28:55
• other “BC apps repo” at 34:30
• other “Business Central app suite” at 34:04
• other “NST” at 39:22
• other “ALOps” at 40:27
• other “Alpaca” at 40:27
• other “BCContainerHelper H2 module” at 46:27

Quotes

• 5:01 “It provisioned more than 75,000 different containers. Compiled half a million apps and published about a million of these apps”
• 5:50 “Container Helper will go out of support on October 1st, 2027”
• 8:43 “we’re kind of shifting towards github and al go for github in this agentic loop”
• 9:55 “this June we’re going to be moving the entire business central application to BC apps. So that includes the base app, includes pretty much”
• 10:56 “by the end of June, once we’re fully on AL Go for GitHub, you know, we can’t ship without AL Go for GitHub”

Disclaimers in the video

• 0:45 preview: Container helper is being deprecated
• 5:50 coming-later: Container Helper will go out of support on October 1st, 2027
• 10:34 subject-to-change: Unfortunately there were some complications that came in the way, but we’re still on track to make it by June for moving Business Central application to BC apps
• 13:51 coming-later: Code coverage is coming soon to AL-Go, along with automatic reruns on flaky tests, improved incremental builds, and turn-based testing
• 14:14 preview: PR reviewer agent is currently in testing and dogfooding phase, will ship as opt-in once mature
• 15:09 coming-later: A year ago when we announced the deprecation of easy container helper
• 18:37 coming-later: BC Container Helper will be supported until October 2027
• 21:01 coming-later: Hopefully by end of 2026, we’re going to have a new module, BC CH 2.0 something, whatever
• 26:53 subject-to-change: gradually migrate functionality in Ail Go over to the new module, slowly roll it out
• 29:36 subject-to-change: There won’t be a full feature parity between what BC container helper can do and what BC container helper two can do
• 30:07 subject-to-change: It’s not in the plans right now, but but like I said, give us the feedback
• 31:35 coming-later: I think we’ll make it available as soon as we can. As soon as we have at least one scenario
• 39:35 subject-to-change: there are no official plans to do that. There are talks internally about it
• 39:45 coming-later: There are no official plans to do that. There are talks internally about it
• 43:21 subject-to-change: there are some changes coming that actually I’m not probably not officially

Presenters (as heard): Yonas, Alex, Alexander, Freddy, Jesper, Marcos.