Unable to configure the PATH environment variable in Kudu shell via XDT

Question

I am trying to set the PATH environment variable for a web app I am building in Azure in python. I tried to use something like os.environ.setdefault('PATH', 'pandoc-2.14.1-1-amd64.deb') locally, however this does not seem to work once uploaded. I have also tried setting the path in the configuration section on the azure portal, but get the following error:

I have seen posts like setting the webapp %PATH% environment variable in azure. The post recommends adding a file called applicationHost.xdt to the home/site directory, which should set the PATH variable automatically. However, I am unable to upload applicationHost.xdt to the files in the directory. This is either because the file UI interface no longer exists, or I am unable to access it. Has the ability to upload via the UI been discontinued?

The only other workaround I can think of is to use echo/cat in the Kudu bash shell to create the applicationHost.xdt manually. This is very tricky. Are there any online tools that, given an input of the contents of a file, create the bash script to generate that file from scratch?

Answer 1

You could add a App settings to you web app, like below:

Then, restart your web app, in Kudu console, you could check it.

Note: App setting names must be unique, so when you use PATH as key it is already configured while deploy so while using in App setting from portal use a different Key name.

As a workaround, you can achieve that through an XDT Transform (XML Document Transform).

Yes, you can use echo to create the same. Simple copy paste the content of the file to be inside single quote ' and stream it into the file already created using echo command.

/home>echo '<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform"> 
  <system.webServer> 
    <runtime xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing">
      <environmentVariables xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing">
        <add name="FOO" value="BAR" xdt:Locator="Match(name)" xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing" />    
        <add name="PATH" value="%PATH%;%HOME%\BAR" xdt:Locator="Match(name)" xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing" />    
      </environmentVariables>
    </runtime> 
  </system.webServer> 
</configuration>' > applicationHost.xdt

Verify the contents using cat command