FEATURE IDEA: remove required API version from the module declaration?

[oliverlabs]

I find it very tedious to always have to look-up random dates for module API versions as the IntelliSense seems to only work sporadically for me. Could we make module API version optional? It could always default to @latest, while users would optionally be able to pin it to a specific version if needed.

Here's an example

Today:

resource rg 'Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups@2021-04-01' = [for i in range(1,4): {
  name : 'rg${i}'
  location : location
}]

Proposed (option 1):

resource rg 'Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups@latest' = [for i in range(1,4): {
  name : 'rg${i}'
  location : location
}]

Proposed (option 2):

resource rg 'Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups' = [for i in range(1,4): {
  name : 'rg${i}'
  location : location
}]

[uky2019]

And to add to this, is latest API always backwards compatible? So if you always use latest it should work every time? Maybe then it makes sense to have option to just write "latest" and be done with it.

[anthony-c-martin]

Unfortunately it's complicated - here's an explanation I wrote up a while back: #1002 (comment). We have #622 to track this idea generally.

[oliverlabs]

@anthony-c-martin, have you seen the bruh tool? it does in-place update of API versions in bulk. Not quite what I proposed originally, but still a much better experience than having to 'guess' the api version once it gets older.

[anthony-c-martin]

I hadn't, thanks for sharing! I think that's a great option for people looking to auto-upgrade.