New Prefect 2.0.2 release adding .prefectignore, Azure file system block, improved error messages and docs, better handling of async timeout and cool new issue templates!

Announcements
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Hi everyone!

Last announcement for today: we’ve just released Prefect 2.0.2 with some highly requested features for improved deployment UX!

In response to your feedback, we realized that during deployment build, you may want to skip upload of some files which are relevant for local development but not intended for use in production. To solve that problem, we introduced the .prefectignore file! :sunglasses:

How to use .prefectignore?

Add the file .prefectignore to your root project directory and follow the same syntax as in .gitignore to make Prefect aware that we should ignore those files and directories at deployment build time.

  • The syntax supports pattern matching, so an entry of *.pyc will ensure all .pyc files are ignored.
  • Prefect will add a default .prefectignore file if you don’t add it yourself - you can customize it at any time.

Azure file system block

If you are an Azure user, you can start using that as a storage of your flow code and custom modules. Simply add an Azure block in your UI or suing the following Python syntax:

from prefect.filesystems import Azure

block = Azure(azure_storage_connection_string="paste_the_string_here")
block.save("dev")

And reference that block in your deployment CLI:

prefect deployment build flow.py:flowname \
 --name deploy_name --tag dev -sb azure/dev

Issue templates

You can now submit bug reports and feature enhancements using our improved issue templates. Shoutout to @peyton-prefect for being so proactive and streamlining that experience for everyone! :clap:

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Further improvements and bug fixes

  • Block deletion is now more performant.

  • Some inconsistencies in the UI have been removed.

  • Error messaging is clearer in the deployment build CLI command and the CLI got much more descriptive:

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  • Resolved timeout errors that occurred when using async task functions inside synchronous flows. :gear:

We’ll likely ship more releases within the next week to keep improving the deployments UX and improving Prefect 2.0 based on your post-GA release feedback. Keep this feedback coming, but when you report feedback, please focus on the problems you are trying to solve - this helps us better determine how your request fits into a bigger picture and helps us address your issue more holistically.

Thanks, and happy engineering!

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